Category: Other Opposing Worldview

“but to the extent that it (Presuppositionalism/Biblicism) has replaced or removed rational argument and empirical observations, to the extent that it has eviscerated the category and utility of common notions, to the extent that it has functionally displaced or even, for some, denigrated the place of nature and natural law and natural theology, and, to the extent that all of this is embraced by professing Christians as an unassailable bulwark of “biblical” intellectual potency, it is not to be commended but to be condemned as an utter usurper.”

Mr. Cody Justice
American Mantle.

You know I’ve tried to play nice with this Natural Law crowd but they keep digging at Presuppositionalism, Biblicism, and Theonomy and as a result there is nothing left to do but to continue to do what we have done here before and that is to repudiate their accusations. I will have to say though, that it was brave of them some time ago to have Rev. David Reece debate Dr. Stephen Wolfe on the issue of Natural Law vs. Presuppositionalism /Biblicism. I highly recommend this debate because, while collegial and congenial, frankly David Reece bested Dr. Wolfe in this debate. It wasn’t even close. I suspect that Reece or any other Theonomist will not be asked back again to debate Dr. Wolfe on this subject.

As to the above quote;

1.) Presuppositionalism/Biblicism (hereafter P/B) has never sought to replace or remove rational argument and empirical observations. A read of the small book by Thom Notaro, titled, “Van Til’s Use Of Evidence” puts such calumny to death and reveals a profound misunderstanding on Mr. Justice’s part on P/B. This accusation rests on the old canard, long disproven, that P/B = Fideism. The P/B advocate is no more or less Fideistic than Mr. Justice or any other Natural Law warrior. The only difference is that Mr. Justice has a fideistic faith that presupposes man as man’s own beginning point while P/B fideistic faith that presupposes God as man’s beginning point. Both then use rational argument and empirical observation that winds out of those beginning points.

2.) Now, quite to the chagrin of Mr. Justice, we have to ask by what standard do we arrive at his idea of “common notions?” Common notions by what standard? Already here in Michigan I can hear the wailing of Mr. Justice and his gnashing of teeth because in the article that this above snippet is from grinds against the question of “by what standard.” It stands to reason that Mr. Justice would grind over this because that question puts the end to the whole notion of Natural Law. Now, I am not denying that Natural Law exists but, unlike Mr. Justice, I believe that fallen man’s mind is at enmity with God. I also believe in the Reformed doctrine called “Total Depravity.” Finally, I believe because the mind of fallen man is at enmity with God, thus revealing the truth of a total depravity that affected the whole man (including his intellect – sans Aquinas) yielding the truth found in Scripture that fallen man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. In the face of all these long accepted Reformed doctrines (Total Depravity, Noetic effects of the fall, A suppressing of the truth in unrighteousness) Mr. Justice and the Natural Law fanboys continue to thump for Aristotelian Natural Law theories.

In pursuit of clarity, I do not deny that all ground is common ground but I do deny that any ground is neutral ground. All ground is common ground because it is God’s ground and that never changes. However, all ground is not neutral ground because fallen man denies the fact that the ground is common ground because it belongs to God. The fallen man is seeking to usurp God’s claim and so suppresses the truth of what he can’t evade knowing. Hence, the idea of common notions is turkey offal.

3.) In light of all this we must ask Mr. Justice… “Who is the usurper?” It is true that the P/B has long usurped the Aristotle / Aquinas  tradition but it is they who usurped Scripture. So, despite Mr. Justice’s cavailing we will continue to be glad to play the usurpers, to his tradition of usurping. I am glad to match Mr. Justice’s condemning of P/B by consigning to the depths of utter hell the whole idea of Natural Law/ Natural theology as it comes to us from the hand of Aquinas and Aristotle. It was one of those areas where the Reformation still had Reforming to do once it picked it up to “advance” the cause of Reformation.

4.) Just to be clear here … I do, as a advocate of P/B denigrate the place of nature and natural law and natural theology. I do so proudly and with all the cheekiness  I can generate. It is an abomination. It is a blemish on the Reformed tradition and you can imagine the delight that I find in the fact that both R2k and this Wolfe Natural Law school both appeal to this same Natural Law to come to conclusions that are 180 degrees different. Where now your Natural Law Mr. Justice that is so obvious to be understood that we find Christian Ph.D’s at each other’s throats regarding how it should be interpreted?

5.) Mr. Justice assails P/B but, alas, his assailing is like so many BB’s off a battleship. Both Van Til and Gordon H. Clark refuted over and over again this whole Natural Law stand up comic routine. Their arguments remain as valid and cogent now as they were when they first made them. If people want to read a quick rebuttal I would recommend, Dr. Robert A. Morey’s book, “The Bible, Natural Theology, And Natural Law; Conflict or Compromise?”

Over at the link provided at the bottom of this page Andrew Fraser published an article that spilled some ink mentioning myself and Iron Ink. Upon reading the article my first thought was, “Given Andrew’s concerns in this article, I’m not sure why my name and my article dealing with dismissing the accusation that the Dissident Right is really ‘WOKE Right,’ even got into Mr. Fraser’s sites.” Most of his article dealt with the way he was dismissed and ignored by the “Right Response” chaps at a recent conference the Right Response guys held. It seems they refused Mr. Fraser the opportunity to set up a book table at the conference.

I should say at the outset that I am a wee bit familiar with Mr. Fraser’s works. Several years ago, I read, with great delight, his “Dissident Dispatches.” There was very little in that book with which I found myself disagreeing. As such, it was quite the surprise when Mr. Fraser should find himself disagreeing with me so strenuously.

It seems that Mr. Fraser thinks that the chaps at Right Response (Joel Webbon, Wesley Todd, and Michael Belch,) are somehow intellectually linked with myself. I would like to say here to Mr. Fraser that I’m pretty confident that’s not true, especially given the fact that they would move heaven and earth to avoid being labeled as “Kinists” while Rev. Andy Webb has called me “The Godfather of Kinism.”

Mr. Fraser, on the other hand, seems to embrace the idea of Kinism given what he writes in one of his analysis pieces explaining his recent book;

“Accordingly, in the Anglosphere at least, the postmodern restoration of Christian nationhood should be inspired by a neo-Angelcynn theopolitics best organized around four “orienting concepts”: process theism, preterism, kinism, and royalism.”

And he complains in that same analysis piece that;

 Even Stephen Wolfe, the most prominent American Christian nationalist, downplays, when not outright denying, the intractably biocultural dimension of Anglo-Saxon identity.  He has suggested, for example, that even black men such as Booker T. Washington and Justice Clarence Thomas (who happens to be a devout Catholic) have been assimilated into the Anglo-Protestant ethnonation.

So, on the narrow points of esteeming Kinism and thinking Stephen Wolfe is in error when Wolfe downplays the biocultural dimension of Anglo-Saxon identity Fraser and I are in league. If the blokes in charge of the Right Response conference knew of this conviction of Mr. Fraser regarding Kinism that would have been, by itself, reason enough for them to block Mr. Fraser from setting up a book table. For reasons that continue to completely mystify me, the Christian Nationalist movement remains scared out of their skin at the idea of Kinism. Alternately, they have no problem with the idea but the word itself makes them wet their pants with fear. They would, it seems, rather be flayed alive then to be associated with Kinism. Go figure.

In terms of the other three pillars that Mr. Fraser is building advocacy for his position upon (Royalism, Preterism, and Process Theism) I am personally indifferent to the first one (Royalism) am cautious about the second (Preterism) and am radically opposed to the third one (Process Theism).

I could easily live within a Monarchical system though I would prefer it to be a Constitutional Monarchy with the King hemmed in by the parameters of God’s Law. I have no problem with a healthy Partial Preterism though I remain convinced that Full Preterism is unabashed heresy. The Scriptures are unmistakable about the literal resurrection of the persons and physical bodies of those who have died — some to eternal misery, with the vast majority resurrected to eternal life in the renewed heavens and earth. The problems with Process of Theism are so vast that anybody who embraces it can no longer be considered a Christian. Process theism holds to a god that is a stranger to the God of the Bible. The God revealed in the Bible is immutable, eternal, impassible, and is taught to have aseity. The God of process theism to the contrary is a God who is affected by temporal processes and so therefore is mutable, time-bound, passable, and lacks aseity. This is the god of Hegel who is constantly becoming as he responds to mankind in history.

Of course by embracing Process Theism one can’t help but wonder if Fraser is a Christian in any traditional, orthodox, or historical sense. If the chaps at Right Response Ministries understood all this about Mr. Fraser it stands to reason they wouldn’t give him a book table to hawk his books. I wouldn’t either. Christians don’t promote non-Christianity at their conferences.

The somewhat ironic thing about this is that I agree with Mr. Fraser that what is needed is the Christ who is not only Universal but who is also particular. Christ is indeed a global Christ but He is a global Christ who rules over a confederated church that is represented by and comprised of many national churches. The New Jerusalem, we are taught, is populated by people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, in their tribes, tongues, and nations. When Revelation 21 teaches that it is nation by nation that enter into the New Jerusalem we learn that Christianity is a faith that does not champion the Universal Jesus to the neglect of the particular Jesus. Because of this teaching there is no threat in my theology, as Mr. Fraser writes;

 “Of an exclusive ecclesiastical allegiance to a generic cosmic Christ reducing the distinctive character of every earthly ethnoreligious identity to mere adiaphora (i.e., things inessential in the eyes of the church).”

And so I have no problem with what Mr. Fraser writes that “the rebirth of Anglo-Protestantism demands an ethnoreligious foundation.” However, I would war against any ethno-Christian foundation that included process theism or full Preterism. Further, I would vigorously argue that one doesn’t need either full Preterism, or process theism, in order to have the rebirth of a folk Christianity that is Anglo-Protestant. Indeed, I would argue that any Christianity that is characterized by full Preterism and/or process theism would be anti-Christ and so anti-Christianity.

Mr. Fraser complains about a lack of particularity in current versions of Christian Nationalism and yet that complaint is what one would expect from a man who has the lack of the Universal in his theology. For Mr. Fraser there is no Universal to hold his particulars together into a cohesive whole. Without a Universal the particulars are not possible, just as without a “Uni” in University, there can be no “(di)versity.”

Mr. Fraser did me the courtesy of correctly stating my position when he disagreed with it. I do believe that;

“Biblical Christianity … believes in a universal ‘history directed towards the postmillennial end of God’s Kingdom being built up on planet earth’ in fulfillment of God’s plan ‘to have the Kingdoms of this earth become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ.’”

And in that statement we find the presence of the Universal and the particulars. There is one Kingdom of God (Universal) that is occupied by the “Kingdoms of this earth” becoming “the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ.” Further, as mentioned earlier, these sundry and varied Kingdoms all come into the New Jerusalem on that final day in all their particular nationalistic glory.

^{Revelation 21:22} I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. ²³ The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. ²⁴ The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.

In the end, I quite agree with Mr. Fraser that “the rebirth of Anglo-Protestantism demands an ethnoreligious foundation,” though I would prefer the phrase “ethno-Christian.”

Much more might be said but I think this covers both my agreements and disagreements with Mr. Fraser. Given his embrace of Process Theism with its implicit Hegelianism I would lack kindness if I did not end with politely asking Mr. Fraser to consider repenting of such non-Biblical axioms.

Those wanting to read a more exhaustive explanation of Mr. Fraser’s position should read here;

Christian Nationalism vs Global Jesus: Projects of Peoplehood from Biblical Israel to the Collapse of British Patriotism

If more questions by the readers arise from reading Mr. Fraser’s article I would be more than glad to answer them.