Other Opposing Worldview

Rome & Eastern Orthodoxy Remain Christless

“For Presbyterians of all others to discount the perpetual danger from Romanism is thoroughly thoughtless and rash. We believe that the Christianity left by the apostles to the primitive church was essentially what we now call Presbyterian and Protestant. Prelacy and popery speedily began to work in the bosom of that community and steadily wrought its corruption and almost its total extirpation. Why should not the same cause tend to work the same result again? Are we truer or wiser Presbyterians than those trained by the apostles? Have the enemies of truth become less skillful and dangerous by gaining the experience of centuries? The popish system of ritual and doctrine was a gradual growth, which, modifying true Christianity, first perverted and then extinguished it. Its destructive power has resulted from this: that it has not been the invention of any one cunning and hostile mind, but a gradual growth, modified by hundreds or thousands of its cultivators, who were the most acute, learned, selfish, and anti-Christian spirits of their generations, perpetually retouched and adapted to every weakness and every attribute of depraved human nature, until it became the most skillful and pernicious system of error which the world has ever known. As it has adjusted itself to every superstition, every sense of guilt, every foible and craving of the depraved human heart, so it has travestied with consummate skill every active principle of the Gospel. It is doubtless the ne plus ultra of religious delusion, the final and highest result of perverted human faculty guided by the sagacity of the great enemy.”

Robert L Dabney

The attractions of Popery

Could it be that one reason people are moving to Rome and EO is because what they are envisioned as doing is pursuing a continuity with a storied past? Could the move away from Protestantism be due to the fact that such a move is the new counter-culture move? Protestantism is seen as irrelevant because it represents all that is shallow, disposable, and unworthy about our current moment.

People want gravitas again and the smells and bells of Rome and EO give them that.

Now, of course, we few Protestants who never took up the worship as a bad rock concert or the sermons as 10 minute self help talks or who never viewed the congregation as a Brothel from which ambitious ministers might have their pick have always known Rome and EO is all promise with no fulfillment and so we know there will be no fulfillment for those traipsing to Rome and EO.

But, in our hearts of hearts we understand that the flight to Rome or EO by the hoi polloi is likely not going to be any worse for their souls and lives then the rancid miasma they are fleeing from. Despite that being so we have a need to be responsible and warn people off of Rome and EO as being dangers to their souls. This needs to be said repeatedly as we now have platformed Protestants out there (Joel Webbon comes to mind) who are suggesting that Rome is a better poison than the poison of the Cultural Marxists. Poison is poison and we cannot make peace with any poison that will kill us dead.

I have no doubt that many in the confederation of Rome or EO share values with biblical Christians that many in the Evangelical/Reformed/R2K world do not share given how degenerate the Evangelical/Reformed/R2K world has become but those shared values do not translate into a shared faith, religion, or God.

Beware Rome … Beware EO.

An Apologetic Against Favoring Relics As Posited By A Roman Catholic

St. John Lateran is the Cathedral of the Popes. The “church” is a treasure house of relics where you will allegedly find;

1.) The heads of St. Peter and Paul

2.) The ark of the covenant

3.) The tablets of Moses

4.) The rod of Aaron

5.) An urn of Manna

6.) The Virgin’s tunic

7.) Five loaves and two fishes from the feeding of the 5K

8.) The dinner table from the Lord’s supper

And in the Pope’s chapel there resides;

1.) Foreskin and umbilical cord of Jesus.

Stephen O’Shea
The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars

Bret observes,

Do you realize how credulous one has to be to be Roman Catholic?

It should be further observed that this idea of the necessity for relics as contributive to salvation in the Roman Catholic system continues today seeing , every Catholic church is required to have at least one relic, typically placed within the main altar.

Relics thus, are part and parcel of the Roman Catholic salvation system. To this day in the Roman Catholic process of salvation visiting a relic can grant a plenary indulgence, which may reduce or eliminate time spent in purgatory, thus hastening the Roman Catholic’s longed for salvation.

Jon Sheldon (Roman Catholic) defending relics replies,

“St John Lateran indeed has relics, as do churches all over the world. (Though I am not familiar with exactly which relics they have.) There is nothing unbelievable about relics unless you have an anti supernatural bias. This is exactly how I would argue against an atheist, by the way.

Relics are long attested to both scripturally and historically. The dead man who fell into Elisha’s tomb and was made alive and Paul’s handkerchief are two examples.

The early church kept and distributed relics.

If this makes us cringe today, or view these people as primitive, it is merely our post-enlightenment sensitivities.

It is also fundamentally gnostic. ‘Old bones and wood can’t possibly transmit power, that’s just superstition. God only transmits grace directly and invisibly.’”

Bret responds,

1.) Your examples from the Scripture on relics suffers from the fact that those examples are FROM SCRIPTURE. All the other relics scattered all over the world were not sanctioned by the testimony of Scripture. Further we are not told from Scripture that those articles mentioned in Scripture should continue to be seen as transmitting power. This is yet another example of Rome reading into Scripture.

2.) There are scads of problems with relics since the Scripture teaches us to place our trust in Christ alone and not power emanating relics. The Heidelberg Catechism, drawing from Scripture, teaches that

Q. Why is the Son of God called Jesus, that is, Saviour?

A. Because he saves us from all our sins,1 and because salvation is not to be sought or found in anyone else.2

1 Mt 1:21; Heb 7:25.
2 Is 43:11; Jn 15:4, 5; Acts 4:11, 12; 1 Tim 2:5.

30. Q. Do those who seek their salvation or well-being in saints, in themselves, or anywhere else (RELICS), also believe in the only Saviour Jesus?

A. No. Though they boast of him in words, they in fact deny the only Saviour Jesus.1 For one of two things must be true: either Jesus is not a complete Saviour, or those who by true faith accept this Saviour must find in him all that is necessary for their salvation.2

1 1 Cor 1:12, 13; Gal 5:4.
2 Col 1:19, 20; 2:10; 1 Jn 1:7.

3.) That the early church was in error is not a surprise to anyone given the problems the earliest churches had (Corinth, Galatia, Colossae, etc.). The early church does NOT get pride of place simply because it was the early church.

4.) A lack of belief on the part of Christians regarding the nonsense of relics does not mean a lack of belief in the supernatural. It merely means a lack of belief in the supernatural when it comes to the Roman Catholic church using this kind of manipulation to keep people in spiritual bondage and from trusting in Christ alone for salvation.

5.) I do not deny that the means of grace that God ordains for salvation are means of grace. In point of fact I insist that Rome cheapens the means of grace by introducing all these other means of grace that you are defending. If everything is a means of grace nothing is a means of grace. God explicitly gave us two means of grace and the foreskin of Jesus and the umbilical cord from Jesus are not among them.

Oh … and by the way … this is the way I argue against credulous Roman Catholics.

McAtee Continues To Pick Apart Tchividijan’s Nonsense

“So much of what passes for “Christian influence” today sounds more like Christian control. We hear calls to “take back the culture,” “reclaim America for Christ,” and “restore Christian values.” But the kingdom of God doesn’t come by seizing cultural control. It doesn’t advance by force or fear. It spreads through weakness, confession, forgiveness, and love. “Christian nationalism” turns the Christian’s calling to serve into a crusade to conquer. It assumes that the kingdom of God is something we build, when the gospel says it’s something we receive. Grace frees us from the burden of “taking back” anything. The world doesn’t need our dominance — it needs our service. The gospel doesn’t build empires — it resurrects sinners.”

📷Tullian Tchividjian
Previous advocate for Anti-nomianism
Now Advocate for Anabaptist theology

1.) There is no such thing as neutrality. Either the Christian faith is in control or a Christ hating faith is in control. Hence Christian control when it is indeed Christian is a reality to be pursued and delighted in.

2.) Tullian is advancing the idea that we seize cultural control by not seizing cultural control. Tullian argues that the Kingdom will indeed be received and so come but it is only to come and be received “through weakness, confession, forgiveness, and love.” Tullian doesn’t have a problem with the Kingdom of Christ coming. His only insistence is that the Kingdom of Christ come as Christians pursue cultural defeat and surrender. So, Tullian wants Christian dominance as much as the person he is complaining about but only in his way — the way of defeat and surrender.

3.) Tullian is seeking to advance his view of cultural control by seeking to shame Christians who disagree with him. That’s not very forgiving or loving or a matter of weakness on Tullian’s part. If Tullian really wanted to be weak he would just shut up on this matter and go into his prayer closet and just pray for his view of the Kingdom to come to pass and so quite lecturing other people because in his lecturing of other people there is a lack of weakness on his part.

4.) Notice that Tullian is seeking to advance his version of the Kingdom by means of fear. The fear that Tullian is trying to stoke is the fear of being displeasing to God if we advocate for the Lord Jesus Christ who is King be owned as King. Tullian would have it that Christ is only going to owned as King when His people do not insist that Christ be owned as King. Per Tullian, only by living as if Christ is not King can the Kingdom be received.

5.) Notice the glaring false dichotomy from Tullian here;

“‘Christian nationalism’ turns the Christian’s calling to serve into a crusade to conquer.”

Who says that a crusade to conquer can not be a matter of service? When cultures are conquered for Christ those who are in bondage to crimes such as sex trafficking, abortion, sodomy, etc. are no longer living in the context where such things are allowed. They may not yet be redeemed individually, but they are no longer living in a culture that is contrary to God’s expressed law-order. Is not the change that would come by Christians conquering be a service to those who would otherwise be plowed under and destroyed by such illegal legalities that exist in anti-Christ cultures?

In brief, there is nothing inherently sinful in conquering and conquering can be done as a means of service. Tullian is involved in a false dichotomy here. It would be a good thing for Talmudic or Mooselimb cultures to be conquered. It would be a matter of service to the people in those cultures if Christ who is King were to be owned as King.

6.) Tullian has another false dichotomy when he puts receiving the Kingdom in conflict with building the Kingdom. Because all is of Grace it is simply the case that when building the Kingdom we are also receiving the Kingdom. If I build a house as a Christian I understand that God is the one who has given me all the resources to that end and so it can be said at one and the same time that as I build my house I am receiving my house. Tullian’s reasoning here is of a nature that we should not plant a vegetable garden to get vegetables because God will provide vegetables, or similarly, we should not seek to build a family by the normal means of having children because God will provide children. In the same way Tullian is saying we should not seek to build God’s Kingdom because we are going to receive God’s Kingdom. Tullian is operating from a completely pietistic/retreatist worldview where man doesn’t work out what God works in.

7.) Tullian gives us another gem with;

“Grace frees us from the burden of “taking back” anything.

Really? Grace frees us from the burden of “taking back” family relationships that were destroyed because of a previous absence of grace? Grace frees us from “taking back” the harm that was inflicted in our business relationship with consumers because of a previous absence of grace? Grace frees us to be obedient and being obedient means that we take back those matters (for God’s glory) that were so injured by the absence of grace. That sentence from Tullian is just really pietistic bloviating. It sounds good but it really has little meaning.

8.) As mentioned earlier, Christian dominance when it is Christian is a service that the world desperately needs. What the world or the church doesn’t need is the kind of Christian dominance by surrender that Tullian is pushing.

9.) Tullian ends with another false dichotomy;

“The gospel doesn’t build empires — it resurrects sinners.”

These two realities are not mutually exclusive. In point of fact the Gospel as it resurrects sinners does build nations. The two go hand in glove. Where the Gospel resurrects sinners the effect is going to be that those resurrected sinners are going to in turn, in obedience to Christ desire to live in social orders that are pleasing to Christ and His authority.

So, while the Gospel may not build empires, it certainly does build nations and social orders where the Gospel and the whole of Christianity is honored.

10.) In the end this is a debate about two very different visions of Christianity. I would insist that Tullian is dishonoring Jesus by not taking Christ’s office of King seriously. Indeed, I would say Tullian completely dismisses the idea of Christ as “Lord.” For Tullian Christ’s Lordship is a Gnostic kind of reality. It is the same kind of Kingship that one finds in R2K thinking. It is the kind of Kingship that says “Jesus is King in a non Kingly way.”

McAtee Contra Tchividijan On The Evils Of Christian Nationalism

“When you start blending the gospel with nationalism, you don’t just confuse categories—you corrupt the message. The gospel isn’t about reclaiming a country; it’s about redeeming people.

This kind of distortion doesn’t stay contained. It ripples out—generation after generation—leaving behind a trail of disillusioned people who think Christianity is about moral superiority and cultural dominance instead of forgiveness and grace.

Lord have mercy.”

Tullian Tchividjian
Billy Graham Grandson
Former Presbyterian

1.) Blending the Gospel with Nationalism?

Yet isn’t this what Jesus did when He told his disciple to teach the nations to observe all things that Jesus had taught them?

These chaps keep using the word “Nationalism” like it is this poison rag that is inconsistent with the Gospel. Yet, the Gospel has every intent of having all nations owning Christ as Lord. After all, Christ must rule until all things are placed under His feet …. including nations.

This also demonstrates the age old Baptist type behavior of insisting that the Gospel is only an individualistic thing. The Gospel is to have no corporate or Institutional impact. Individuals can be saved, so the thinking goes, but not families, ethnicities, nations or cultures.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that if the Gospel is not blended with a proper and biblical understanding of Nationalism, that it is NOT the Gospel.

2.) The Gospel is about redeeming individuals and reclaiming countries. Does Tullian really believe that the LORD Jesus Christ is not interested in reclaiming countries. What does Tullian do with the idea that the Gospel has the power to restore “wherever the curse is found?” I suspect that Tullian, and all people who talk like this own a pessimistic eschatology. If they are postmills (and Andrew Sandlin talks this way) then they have contradictions all over their eschatology.

3.) One wants to shake Tullian, and his ilk, and ask them why they are so opposed to Nations owning Christ and upon owning Christ weaving into their constitutions and law order the teaching and standards of Biblical Christianity. How could that possibly be a bad thing?

4.) Christianity can be both about forgiveness and grace as well as about moral superiority and cultural dominance. A Christian people who are part of a Christian nation should be morally superior to nations who are anti-Christ and should also have cultural dominance over them until such a time as they repent.

Now, if Tullian is talking about the self-righteousness that can come from those who do not understand themselves sinners saved by grace alone then of course that kind of moral superiority should be abominated and the culture that produces should NOT have dominance but a people believing that they are morally superior and so should have cultural dominance – only because of Christ’s favor – while they continue to embrace that they are simultaneously sinner and saint are to be celebrated. All Christians should strive for that type of moral superiority and cultural dominance. It is a righteous thing and not evil in God’s sight that the righteous should rule over the wicked Christ hater.

Exposing Natural Law For the Cheat It Is (I)

^{John 1:4}In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Jesus Himself said;

“I am the light of the world.” (John 9:5)

The Apostle John said that Jesus;

was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

Of course we know that there was no fault in He who was “the light of the world.” So, the fact that men did not and do not comprehend the light is found in the fact, as John’s Gospel reveals in chapter 3;

¹⁹And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

The practitioners of evil know the darkness and they know the light. They cannot hate the light and refuse to come to the light unless they know yet suppress what they know about the light. The lovers of darkness remain in the dark because they prefer the dark over the light and as they remain in the dark they chant, “there is no light, there is no light.” This is because such men remain dead in their sins and trespasses. Their intellect, will, and affections each and all experience the total effects of the fall. It is because they are sons of darkness that they hate the light.

These Scriptural truths by themselves ought to give the Natural Law fanboys pause before pushing their Aristotelian non-Scriptural position that teaches that fallen man’s intellect is not completely fallen and so can read “Nature” (however that might be defined) aright. But there is more. The Holy Spirit can say in I Corinthians 2:14

¹⁴But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Yet, despite this testimony of Scripture the Natural Law advocates now blanketing the church in the chemtrail “theology” of both the R2K Escondido crowd and the Dr. Stephen Wolfe Christian Nationalism crowd are poisoning the Church.

Over and over again the Scripture teaches that man, starting from himself and his own resources, runs from capital T truth. Scripture teaches also in Romans 8;

“… the carnal mind is enmity (warfare) against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.”

Fallen man, as Paul says earlier in Romans as the wrath of God upon Him;

¹⁸For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, ²¹because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

When non-Christians consider anything that can be found in what people call “natural law” they invariably use what they find to further their sinful ends. So, for example, fallen man finds gender realities in Natural law and for a season fallen man may well conform to gender realities when living in a predominantly Christian shaped nation. But even in the times of “conforming” one does not find the non-Christian living out their gender to the glory of God. Instead, fallen men prioritize themselves and their needs above their spouses. Then, over the course of time, as we are seeing now in the West, natural man, using natural law and right reason insist that there are no gender realities to conform to. They insist that the idea that one man goes with one woman for life is antiquated and mistaken. They suppress even more overtly than their heathen fathers the idea of gender realities. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They prefer the darkness to light. They are at enmity with God. The idea that natural law is going to somehow be the means whereby men are going to give up their suppression, warfare, and preference for the dark is a Aristotelian fairytale – a fairytale that more and more of the Christian church is taking up.

At one time natural law theory taught that “Nature” was the objective, external, corporeal universe that was objectively out there and could be known by all men. There was no consensus on where these laws of nature came from. They just were … and these eternally existing natural laws which existed autonomously governed both the gods and men.

When the philosophical world was ruled by the empiricists the laws of nature along with the external, material, objective universe were just out there in the cosmos. But as the worldview of men shifted from empiricism to different forms of idealism this “out there-ness” view of natural law was eclipsed and in its place the idea of natural law shifted to being located to the internal, subjective, non-corporeal “mind” of man. Human reason itself became the locus of Natural Law. Autonomous man, starting with and from himself could name what the laws of nature were. In this evolution of natural law man even more clearly became his own god determining good from evil.

This has always been and remains the achilles heel of natural law theory. There is no stable definition of natural law. It varies from man to man depending on what philosophical matrix he is living in. It may be the case that the Romanticists/Transcendentalist, the logical positivist, the Deist, and the Utilitarians (to cite random examples) may all agree that Natural Law exists but given their differing philosophical pre-commitments they will never agree on just exactly what Natural Law is as it is concretely defined, and indeed will offer up contradictory definitions.

In the end there is no objective reality in the subjective construct that is Natural Law theory. To be sure God’s creation declares God’s truths. No one disagrees with that. The disagreement arises when the idea is advanced that men’s will and intellect is not so fallen that residual ability remains so that man can, starting with himself (as fallen), as his own beginning point, identify true truth. The objection arises that fallen man starting autonomously with himself will always identify as true truth a fallen “true truth.”

In order for Thomistic Natural Law theory to work force must be used to re-create consensus as to what Natural Law “clearly teaches.” In our current situation this will have to be a force that moves Natural Law away from existing as within each individual to a Natural Law that is once again pretended to be objective. Existentialism and postmodernism, as well as variant forms of Idealism will have to be squashed in order for non-Christian Natural Law to work again. I have no opposition to those being squashed but I remain opposed to a Natural Law that pretends to be objective but really remains somebody’s subjective inflated to serve as a pretend societal objective.

Instead, what we as Christians should pray for is for the West to return to its Scriptural foundation for truth. We must once again embrace the idea that “in thy Light we see light.” We must understand that the axioms of Scripture and necessary consequences of those axioms form our epistemological foundation as a people. The God of the Bible once again must be our starting point when it comes to true truth. Only by having God has our starting point will we reason with a God honoring methodology that results in God honoring conclusions.

Away then with all Thomistic notions of Natural Law. It was bad when the Stoics owned it and it was bad when the Muslims Ibn Tufayl and Averroes embraced it and it remained bad when Aquinas pinched it from Averroes and “Christianized” it.