Category: Other Opposing Worldview

“The Other Worldview; Exposing Christianity’s Greatest Threat” … A Book Review

Dr. Peter Jones has been a great benefactor to the Christian Church in the West with his work on Gnosticism, Egalitarian Pantheism, and Oneism. Via his various works his has been a prophetic voice warning the Church of a worldview switch that is already upon us. The greatest threat to the Church and the West is what he calls “Oneism,” but could just as easily be called “systematic Cultural Marxism.” He mentions Cultural Marxism but his focus is more on Karl Jung and Jung’s disciples. He locates animistic type religion in Jung’s psychoanalysis and insists that the goal of this religious Cultural Marxism is “thus all men Shamans.”

Dr. Peter Jones relates that the problem of the Jung(ians) is that they live in a Cosmos that is defined by Outsidelessness. This is another way of saying that there is no Transcendent Reference point by which meaning can be determined. Without a Transcendent outsidedness (that is also Trinitarian and so personal) what results is man sinking into himself to find meaning and to discover the divinity within.

This new Monistic Cultural Marxist religion is committed to the New Age goal of combining the opposites. This gives us a “beyond good and evil” morality where each man does what is right in his own eyes. Of course this is just another way of embracing the Hegelian dialectic of Marxism.

What has happened in our lifetimes is that we have moved from a Monistic Humanistic materialism where spiritual realities were folded into material reality to a Monistic Humanistic spiritualsim where material realities are now folded into spiritual reality. Both humanisms are Monistic with the only difference being that during the Enlightenment age that which was genuinely spiritual was reduced to the material whereas now that which is genuinely material is reduced to being categorized as spiritual. When one looks at the modern sciences of Quantum indeterminacy, quantum holism, and quantam non-locality (sub sets of Quantum physics) along with Quantum mechanics one begins to see a “science” that is more friendly to the New Ageist Spirituality of Eastern Mysticism and Western Romanticism.

In this new gnostic Monism the goal is the elimination of not only Modernity but also of Biblical Christianity. All of the distinctions that one finds in Biblical Christianity are eliminated in favor of the merging of the opposites. As a result we can speak of now of a Homocosmology, Homostoricism, Homorality, as well as Homosexuality. Indeed so great is the push for the elimination of distinctions that Jones’ opines that a day is coming when Biblical Christianity will be criminalized. The sodomites are NOT interested in equality folks. They are interested in turning normalcy into the aberrant.

Jones’ goes out of his way to agree with what I’ve been saying since I was 30 and that is psychiatry and psychology are the cutting edge expressions of this new religion that intends to crush Biblical Christianity. My angst at this confirmation is that much of the Church and Church Mission agencies have already redefined themselves in terms of the Monistic psychiatry and psychology that Jones’ warns against. It has been the case for years that in many denominations one cannot enter into the ministry or missionary field without first submitting to a battery of Monistic humanistic psychological exams, as well as- required time spent with the Denominational Shrink – Shaman. What has happened is that instead of these fields being reinterpreted through a biblical grid (if indeed that is even possible) the disciplines of humanistic shamanistic psychology have reinterpreted Christianity through their Monistic – gnostic grids. You can be sure that Christ’s Church has suffered as a result of this.

As a criticism of the book, I’m not convinced that Jones’ himself has extirpated all the Monism from himself that he so clearly sees elsewhere. In point of fact, given some of Jones’ complaint about “Institutional racism,” and “Institutional Sexism” one wonders if Jones’ despite his excellent work here hasn’t himself swallowed a poison pill of Monistic making.

I’ve read most of Jones’ published work now and viewed many many of his lectures. That should tell you that I value his work. In point of fact I think it is indispensable given our time and historical situation. When combined with more thorough works on Cultural Marxism and Postmodernism by other authors I think one has the opportunity to see Christianity’s greatest worldview opponent at this time.

In ending I think it should be said again that Radical Two Kingdom theology works perfectly in tandem with what Dr. Jones calls “Oneism.” R2K, in its most virulent and consistent forms, insists that the public square is, by definition, a-religious. As such Christians have no business in trying to appeal to Christianity in order to set aright the inroads of “Oneism.” R2K aids “Oneism” by not only not resisting to Oneism but by suggesting that it is sin to resist to “Oneism.”

Dr. Peter Jones’ Oneism vs. Twoism

“This Utopian vision (of a kind of egalitarian Pantheism) has a long spiritual history. The ideal of the alchemists of the Middle Ages involved ‘the uniting of the opposites …the fusion of male and female, .good and evil, life and death — whose union, they believed, eventually created the perfected and completed, ideal personality called Self. The Utopian cosmology in question understands how deeply the Christian faith has molded Western culture and intends to destroy the ‘bourgeois’ Judaeo-Christian culture as the first step toward a better world. To accomplish this, its advocates must weaken the culture systematically in its economy, its military, its psychology, and its morals.They also know what it will take to establish a revived pagan cosmology and will not tolerate half measures. They want all or nothing. The goal is the complete remaking of human identity.

We cannot see into the future to know if the agenda will succeed, but we need to face squarely the movement that is attempting to wrest our culture from its tenuous grip on Twoist (i.e. — God Transcendent) principles. At this  point, such a powerful cosmology takes on an unmistakably religious character. One is reminded of the goal of the occult Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn…. “The Great Work, is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties, and his future; it is especially the prefect emancipation of his will.”

Sternberg’s analysis of “world purificationists” is right but does not go far enough… It fails to capture the true power of the movement: its possession of a new liberating cosmology, including not just politics and economics but sexuality and spirituality. The sociological analysis, joined to the ideology of revolutionary sexual and spiritual liberation, forms a powerfully influential movement, determined to reinvent the world. Indeed, as politics becomes more all-inclusive, it becomes more religious, claiming to answer all human aspirations, physical and spiritual, and to usher in a better world. ”

Dr. Peter Jones
The Other Worldview; Exposing Christianity’s Greatest Threat — pg. 98

1.) Jones’ conviction (easily sustained) is that the West is moving from its religious and historic foundation wherein a Transcendent God is presupposed to a religious foundation where a extramundane Transcendent personal God is scrubbed.

2.) This new worldview upon which, and by which, the West will operate is “Egalitarian Pantheism.” This is the idea that all is One (Monism) and that any distinction is Maya (illusion). This monist Egalitarian Pantheism posits an “Outsidelessness” to the Cosmos. It is an extension of the “God is Dead” movement started by Old Scratch in Eden, advocated for by Nietzsche in the 20th century, and proclaimed as arrived in the 60’s by process theologians.

This new worldview accounts for much of the degradation of the West since it provides the justification for the whole “social construct” theorizing that we are pummeled with today. Since there is no extramundane transcendent God by which to give meaning and definition to anything, therefore anything that previously had a stable meaning and definition is now open for change since without the Christian God all that is left is social construct. So, if man was really the one that constructed the idea of  gender (as one example) then man can be the one who deconstructs gender. As such, since there is no “Outsidedness” to our Cosmos individual men can construct for themselves all and any meaning they might desire. So, men with penises can still be female in gender due to this Egalitarian Pantheism. In Canada a married man with 7 children decided that he was really a six year old little girl.  In a Egalitarian Pantheistic worldview, where God is dead, who is to say that Stefonknee Wolschtt isn’t a six year old little girl?

3.) This is Existenialism come into its own. Given the philosophical arc that the West has been on for the last 200 years we have arrived at the point that was inevitable from the moment philosophy anchored itself in Descartes “Cogito ergo sum.”

4.) This Pantheistic Egalitarianism insists that it provides a moral construct that is “beyond good and evil.” As such any notion of moral policing is pass’e. However, we must keep in mind that this “beyond good and evil” is a contradiction since what is being advocated is that the morality that is “beyond good and evil” is good, while the morality that is not “beyond good and evil,” is evil.

“Do I contradict myself
Very well, then I contradict myself,
I am large
I contain multitudes.”

Walt Whitman 
Song of Myself

5.) In this Pantheistic Egalitarianism, with its putative “beyond good and evil” morality there is the attempt to fuse the opposites. This is a new age version of the Hegelian dialectic wherein the thesis and antithesis are fused into a synthesis. Because of this attempt at fusion there is the conviction that in order for one to be “self-actualized” one must have within themselves both the virtues of a Chairman Mao and the virtues of a Mother Theresa at the same time.

This idea of “fusion of the opposites,” also underlies much of the perversity in our current sexuality. Homosexuality, Transgenderism, bisexuality, etc. are all, at some level, being driven by Egalitarian Pantheism and the desire to fuse the opposites. To fuse the opposites is the sacrament of Egalitarian Pantheism.

6.) Dr. Jones talks about the necessity to weaken the Christian worldview which supports the current culture that yet retains vestiges of Biblical Christianity. Militarily this was pursued, first, with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and now with the full blown reception of the perverted into the ranks of the US Military. In the economy it has been pursued by the mega corporations marketing to the perverted clientele. In psychology it has been pursued by the mainstreaming of sodomy back in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association’s removing “homosexuality” as a mental illness from its DSM. Of course the most recent weakening came in the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision in the Summer of 2015. Hollywood pursues this worldview relentlessly. Movies such as “The Matrix,” “Interstellar,” “Star Wars,” and “Noah,” all send out the message of Egalitarian Pantheism. The “anti-bullying” laws in Government schools is another means by which Egalitarian Pantheism is pursued. Anti-bullying laws are sold as egalitarian but their real purpose is to protect and mainstream sexual perversion in the schools belonging to the State.

7.) Note Jones’ comment about the desire of Pantheistic Egalitarianism to completely remake human identity. The champions of this new worldview will eventually push for the criminalizing of all those who retain a Transcendent God in their thinking and who insist that the reality of God impact the public square.  All will be forced to support this Egalitarian Pantheism. Any churches that remain will be churches that have reinterpreted Biblical Christianity through a Egalitarian Pantheistic grid. It is already the case that the majority of churches in the West already do so, to one degree or another. Like the Hebrews in the Old Testament who dragged in their idols into God’s Temple to worship those idols so the Church in the West today has dragged in the idol of Egalitarian Pantheism into the sanctuary.

8.) Since there is no extramundane God in Egalitarian Pantheism the sovereign Self is absolutized and in essence becomes the god of the system. All is done for the glory of the sovereign self. Any whim is to be embraced, any idea of “self-control,” or any notion of boundaries or limitations is to be eschewed. All is the self and the self is all. This is the sodomite poet Walt Whitman redux,

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil,
this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

“Song of Myself”

9.) Note the religious character of all this. As we have already noted the fusing of the opposites is the Egalitarian Pantheism’s sacrament. The Shaman-Priest is found in every man. All is god and god is all. The catechism of Egalitarian Pantheism is provided by Hollywood films. Worship occurs wherever and whenever orgasm takes place. There are Saints such as St. Alfred Kinsey, St. Hugh Hefner, St. Ron Jermy, St. Larry Flynt, St. Traci Lords, St. Janine Lindemulder, St. Jenna Haze and St. Tori Black. Egalitarian Pantheism could have a Saint for every day of the year. Of course, this proves again, that religion is an inescapable concept. Religion never goes away. The renown poet William Blake understood this well,

“Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan, & will erect the Synagogue of Satan, calling the Prince of this World, God; and destroying all who do not worship Satan under the Name of God.”
10.)  Note the role of politics. Via Political diktat and legislative tyranny men and women will be forced into Egalitarian Pantheism. This was apparent in 2015 as seen in the attempt by the Lesbian Mayor of Houston, Anise Parker, to force public bathrooms to be co-ed.  This is apparent in the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision. You will submit to Egalitarian Pantheism or you will be a non-person.

Dr. Piper and His Insistence that Christians Should Lie Down and Die

In the next few entries I hope to provide rebuttal to the link below as written by Baptist, Dr. John Piper,

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/should-christians-be-encouraged-to-arm-themselves

In his introduction Dr. Piper writes,

“My main concern in this article is with the appeal to students that stirs them up to have the mindset: Let’s all get guns and teach them a lesson if they come here. The concern is the forging of a disposition in Christians to use lethal force, not as policemen or soldiers, but as ordinary Christians in relation to harmful adversaries.

The issue is not primarily about when and if a Christian may ever use force in self-defense, or the defense of one’s family or friends. There are significant situational ambiguities in the answer to that question. The issue is about the whole tenor and focus and demeanor and heart-attitude of the Christian life. Does it accord with the New Testament to encourage the attitude that says, “I have the power to kill you in my pocket, so don’t mess with me”? My answer is, No.”

Dr. John Piper

___________________

Bret responds,

First, in terms of the quote above, we should note that the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches that the type of pacifism that Dr. Piper is advocating  is forbidden by the 6th commandment. We will see WCF Larger Catechism, Questions 135-136 again as I pick apart Dr. Piper’s Anabaptist convictions.

Q. 135. What are the duties required in the sixth commandment?

A. The duties required in the sixth commandment are all careful studies, and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves[721] and others[722] by resisting all thoughts and purposes,[723] subduing all passions,[724] and avoiding all occasions,[725] temptations,[726] and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any;[727] by just defence thereof against violence,[728] patient bearing of the hand of God,[729] quietness of mind,[730] cheerfulness of spirit;[731] a sober use of meat,[732] drink,[733] physic,[734] sleep,[735] labour,[736] and recreations;[737] by charitable thoughts,[738] love,[739] compassion,[740] meekness, gentleness, kindness;[741] peaceable,[742] mild and courteous speeches and behaviour;[743] forbearance, readiness to be reconciled, patient bearing and forgiving of injuries, and requiting good for evil;[744] comforting and succouring the distressed and protecting and defending the innocent.[745]

Q. 136. What are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are, all taking away the life of ourselves,[746] or of others,[747] except in case of public justice,[748] lawful war,[749] or necessary defence;[750] the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life;[751] sinful anger,[752] hatred,[753] envy,[754] desire of revenge;[755] all excessive passions,[756] distracting cares;[757] immoderate use of meat, drink,[758] labor,[759] and recreations;[760] provoking words,[761] oppression,[762] quarreling,[763] striking, wounding,[764] and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.[765]

Also we note the Heidleberg catechism

105. Q.

What does God require
in the sixth commandment?

A.

I am not to dishonour, hate, injure,
or kill my neighbour
by thoughts, words, or gestures,
and much less by deeds,
whether personally or through another; 1
rather, I am to put away
all desire of revenge. 2
Moreover, I am not to harm or recklessly endanger myself. 3
Therefore, also, the government bears the sword
to prevent murder. 4

The great Puritan commentator on the Bible, Thomas Ridgeley (1667-1734), in his commentary on the Westminster Larger Catechism quotes the Catechism itself as I have above and then in his commentary on Sixth Commandment duties, Ridgeley says,

“We should use all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life, and the life of others [because]…. man is the subject of the divine image…. We are also to defend those who are in imminent danger of death…. Moreover, in some instances, a person may kill another in his own defence, without being guilty of the breach of this commandment….”

Ridgeley goes on to comment that if we cannot disarm an enemy threatening our life, or flee from him, “we do not incur the least guilt, or break this commandment, if we take away his life to preserve our own; especially if we were not first in the quarrel, nor gave occasion to it by any injurious or unlawful practices.”

The Heidelberg Catechism insists that the keeping of the Sixth commandment means that I am not to harm or recklessly endanger myself. It doesn’t take much to argue that we are living in times when not carrying a weapon on us for self defense and the protection of the judicially innocent most definitely constitutes a reckless endangering of ourselves and others.

Dr. Piper is just flat out in error when he offers that the New Testament (and why are we restricting ourselves to only the New Testament Dr. Piper?) does not encourage an attitude that says that, “I will honor God by esteeming the Sixth commandment and so protect my life and the life of the judicially innocent against harmful intent of people who intend to kill and maim with abandon.”

And, to be perfectly honest, we are doing future would be assassins a kindness by teaching present would be assassins a lesson when their intent is to go on Allah exalting killing sprees. Perhaps, it was the case that Dr. Falwell’s phraseology was a bit John Wayne but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it is a loving thing unto future would be assassins for present would be assassins to have Sixth commandment duties enforced against them by private individuals in harm’s way. There is no sin in using lethal force as a private citizen in defense of life. In point of fact, God is magnificently glorified by ordinary Christians using lethal force as consistent with the Sixth commandment and to the contrary when Dr. Piper’s, non Sixth commandment esteeming position is maintained, the reputation of God is sullied and His Glory is tarnished and diminished.

 

Is David Cameron Blind or Stupid in Not Being Able to See His Own Religion?

First, any strategy to defeat extremism must confront, head on, the extreme ideology that underpins it. We must take its component parts to pieces – the cultish worldview, the conspiracy theories, and yes, the so-called glamorous parts of it as well.

In doing so, let’s not forget our strongest weapon: our own liberal values. We should expose their extremism for what it is – a belief system that glorifies violence and subjugates its people – not least Muslim people.

We should contrast their bigotry, aggression and theocracy with our values. We have, in our country, a very clear creed and we need to promote it much more confidently. Wherever we are from, whatever our background, whatever our religion, there are things we share together.

We are all British. We respect democracy and the rule of law. We believe in freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of worship, equal rights regardless of race, sex, sexuality or faith.

We believe in respecting different faiths but also expecting those faiths to support the British way of life. These are British values. And are underpinned by distinct British institutions. Our freedom comes from our Parliamentary democracy. The rule of law exists because of our independent judiciary. This is the home that we are building together.

Whether you are Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian or Sikh, whether you were born here or born abroad, we can all feel part of this country – and we must now all come together and stand up for our values with confidence and pride.

And as we do so, we should together challenge the ludicrous conspiracy theories of the extremists. The world is not conspiring against Islam;

David Cameron
Prime Minister — United Kingdom
Extremism Speech — July 2015

Not being up on everything all the time this “extremism speech” back in July slipped my attention. This piece is jaw dropping incredible in terms of what is left unsaid in the text. I just could leave this alone without commenting on the absurdity.

1.) Cameron keeps invoking English “liberal values” and how those liberal values should be trumpeted in order to overturn the worldview of the extremists. Cameron even evokes the idea of a shared creed. In point of fact what Cameron has done here is he has invoked Liberalism as a religion to overturn the religion of the extremists, for it is only religion that can produce values and creed. Cameron has told his listeners that the religion of English Liberalism, with its creed and values, is superior to the religion of the extremists.  Indeed so superior is this religion of English liberalism that all other religions can only operate in England as long as those religions submit themselves to the religion of English liberalism with its values and creed.

But think about that for just a moment. Does one really own their own religion if their own religion has to submit to the creed and values of another religion?

2.) If “Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian or Sikh …must now all come together and stand up for our values” and for the shared English Liberal creed  then what is the difference between Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian or the Sikh religions except a few rituals? You see what is going on here is that the religion of English Liberalism with its values and creed is redefining what it means to be Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian and Sikh. Are we to really believe that the values and creed of the Muslim faith, Hindu faith, Jewish faith, Christian faith and Sikh faith are so similar that they can perfectly align with the religious values and creed of English liberalism? If Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Christian or Sikh, all share a common creed and values with the religion of English Liberalism what is the need for these other faiths?

3.) Now, about those shared values.  It is really the case that all these faith have a shared value of abortion which glorifies violence, that the English religion of Liberalism champions? Do all these religion have the shared value of equality for all those of different sexuality?  Inasmuch as Cameron, as a adherent to the religion of English Liberalism, is seeking to make Islam accept these values in England in that much he is most certainly conspiring against Islam.

4.) Cameron, as an adherent to the religion of English Liberalism with its value and creed, insist that this religion of his allows for “freedom of speech.” If that is true then why has the Home Secretary of England, in contradiction of putative English religious values and creed, blocked the entry into England of Robert Spence, Pamela Geller, and Michael Savage because they want to speak out against Islam? Does  English religious values and creed allow for the freedom of speech that speaks against the English religious values and creed?

5.) Apparently English religious values and creed makes for a theocracy which does not allow for any gods that do not agree with their values and creed and for the kind of violence they glorify.

6.) We see here that there is very little difference between the extremists and the liberal. They each desire that all other religions bow to their creed and values. They each desire to scrub England of its uniquely Christian past in favor of their own competing religions. The disagreement between the extremists that Cameron complains about and the English liberals is the difference between a Trotsky and a Stalin. The disagreement is on methodology and not on substance. Both the extremists and the English liberals  favor their religion to be the reigning religion. The English liberals desire to subjugate people every bit as much as the extremists they complain of.

In the words of C. William Knot Yielding,

 “The liberals envision a multicultural state in which everyone subscribes to liberal ideals. The Jihadists envision a utopian Moslem state in which everyone adheres to Islamic law. It is the mythical belief of the liberals that the Jihadists are not the real Moslems. In the liberals’ eyes of unreality the Jihadists are the bad Moslems who won’t settle down and enjoy the fruits of multicultural Liberaldom.”

Any Christianity that shares values and creed with either Cameron’s religious Liberalism or the Jihadists religious Islam is a Christian that fails to understand his or her own faith.

The CRC, the Banner, Rev. Bob DeMoor and Homosexuality

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In the July issue of the Banner,

http://www.thebanner.org/departments/2015/06/don-t-walk-away

soon to be departing Rev. Bob DeMoor, makes a case for the CRC denomination not fracturing over the potential future doctrinal embrace of practicing homosexuality. DeMoor’s comment are, politically speaking, quite genius. DeMoor will be leaving the Banner soon and so there is little fallout he will have to face over his advocacy of the Denomination accepting practicing homosexuality via the local option. Once Rev. DeMoor is gone, other bureaucrats can respond to complaints by merely offering, “that’s Bob, and Bob’s gone now.” In the way this has been done the next policy step has been pointed to in a very clean and surgical manner.

Rev. DeMoor implores his readers and the denomination to allow each local congregation to choose for themselves whether or not their local congregation will acknowledge the teaching of Scripture that homosexual practice and lifestyle is sin. What Rev. DeMoor doesn’t tell the reader is that if such a decision was arrived at what that would mean is that those who work for the bureaucracy of the denomination (including the Seminary) would at least have to subscribe to the idea that Scripture both teaches and does not teach that homosexual practice and lifestyle is sin, or at the very least that Scripture is so ambiguous on the subject that it is a matter of adiaphora. As such, with such an embrace of the “local option” as policy the consequence would be a bureaucracy and Seminary that would, by its required muddledness on the subject, be pro-homosexual practice and lifestyle. How long could local churches hold out in upholding God’s clear word against sodomy when the whole Denominational institutional infrastructure is, at best, unable, due to denominational diktat, to be anti-homosexual lifestyle and practice?

Rev. DeMoor enjoins that the denomination should take upon itself the 1980 example of making remarriage after divorce a local option issue. Rev. DeMoor doesn’t mention that there was a long history, in the Reformed World in general, that allowed divorce after remarriage. For example, John Calvin allowed for remarriage in the context of adultery, believing that the penalty for such adultery should be death. Divorce under such circumstances gives the innocent party freedom to remarry, Calvin held, for Jesus’ condemnation of remarriage as adultery applied undoubtedly only to “unlawful and frivolous divorces.” Although Calvin was very conservative in his theological view of divorce, like Luther his practice was more liberal. His “Ecclesiastical Ordinances,” adopted by the Little and Large Councils of 1561, allowed three grounds for divorce and remarriage other than adultery: impotence, extreme religious incompatibility, and abandonment. Calvin also provided for annulment where a spouse could not, because of some physical infirmity, perform the conjugal act.

Similarly the  Westminster Confession of Faith Article 24 has taught since the 17th century,

“In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce: and, after the divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were dead.”

We could just as easily appeal to Tyndale, Bucer, Knox and other Reformed luminaries for the acceptability of remarriage after divorce in some cases.

We conclude thus that the CRC 1980 decision had historical precedents to reverse previous Synods and to allow Churches to employ the local option on the matter of divorce and remarriage. Where are the centuries long historical precedents in the Reformed world for suggesting that homosexual practice and lifestyle is a valid option so that the determining of its acceptability can be decided on a church by church and case by case basis? Rev. DeMoor is comparing apples to bananas by suggesting a parallel can be drawn between the local option as exercised for the allowance of divorce and remarriage and the local option as exercised for the allowance of men sodomizing men and women doing whatever it is that women do to one another when sharing a “conjugal” bed.

Rev. DeMoor then asks the question if such an approach would erode our teaching to biblical commitment and then answers his own question by saying “no” and then citing Scripture that communicates, in Rev. DeMoor’s world, that unity trumps all matters. However, as has been communicated by many a Divine throughout history, Unity is always only a byproduct of shared truth. Where truth is not shared the closest to unity a organization can come to is the empty shell of administrative and bureaucratic unity. This is a unity only for the sake of unity. It is a unity that stands for nothing, that strives for nothing, and that achieves nothing. It is a mirage that progressives are forever seeing.

Rev. DeMoor would have us “have the humility, love, and grace to affirm that we may have to reexamine our own certainties in light of what we communally discover in God’s Word.” This sounds so high minded and pious but what if, after reexamining our own certainties in light of what we communally discover in God’s Word, we have to say, “Here I stand against the communal discoveries, I can do no other”? My Mother always had a word for communal discoveries after I would appeal to her on that basis. Mom would simply say, “If everyone decided to jump off a cliff would you jump off with them?” Mom was pretty wise that way.

Rev. DeMoor fears denominational hemorrhaging, and well he should. However, Rev. DeMoor and others should keep in mind that hemorrhaging only happens where a wound has been inflicted on the body. The sanction and embrace of homosexual practice and lifestyle by the denomination would be a case of a self inflicted wound that results in to be expected hemorrhaging.

One thing I do agree with Rev. DeMoor and that is his observation that, “We won’t agree on what’s pastoral until we agree on what’s sinful.” There is a good deal packed into that sentence. Different visions and understandings of sin, by necessity, imply different visions and understandings of the Character of God. Different visions and understandings of sin, by necessity, imply different understandings of just exactly why the Lord Christ was raised upon the Cross and so raised from the grave. Different visions and  understandings of sin give us different understandings of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification. In point of fact different visions and understandings of sin give us different Gods, Atonements, and Spirit filled living. Those differences give us different Christianities.

May God be pleased to grant to the Christian Reformed Church the wisdom to embrace the Christianity displayed in Holy Writ.