Apologetics – Page 109

Two Cosmologies

“I stand before you as a 40-year-old, single, celibate, and chaste yet openly gay man . . . no longer willing to be silent,” Bowman told the hushed delegates.

Saying he had been excommunicated from another church, Bowman added, “I want to thank this denomination for being affirming of somebody like me.”

Delegates gave him a standing ovation.

Journalist Report From CRC Synod 2013

“All the crosscurrents of present-day liberation struggles are subsumed in the gay struggle. The gay moment is in some ways similar to the moment that other communities have experienced in the nation’s past, but it is also something more, because sexual identity is in crisis throughout the population, and gay people—at once the most conspicuous subjects and objects of the crisis— have been forced to invent a complete cosmology to grasp it. No one says the changes will come easily. But it’s just possible that a small and despised sexual minority will change America forever.”

1993 Cover Story from “The Nation” magazine

Some observations cross correlating the two quotes.

It should be noted that the word “cosmology” in “The Nation” quote is largely synonymous with “Worldview,” and I am using it that way as well.

1.) In a Christian cosmology the main means of identifying one’s self is by the noun “Christian.” In a Christian cosmology one finds their identity in Christ. We are baptized into Christ. We are crucified with Christ. We are raised with Christ. We are even seated in the heavenlies with Christ. The Catechism reminds us that “we are not our own but belong to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.” ST. Paul even can say that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” All of this is what one expects to find in both the individual and the covenant community where a Christian cosmology is in the ascendancy. In a Christian cosmology Christians identify with Christ.

However, when sodomy comes to the fore a new cosmology has to be created in order that the chief identifying mark is not “Christian,” but rather “gay.” In a sodomite cosmology one finds their identity in their homosexuality. This is so true, that the sodomy identity even for the “sanctified Christian homosexual,” is “gay” and not “Christian.”

Now in a Christian cosmology there is understanding that all Christians struggle with what the Scripture call besetting sin and Christianity is sympathetic towards those who are constantly seeking to mortify the old man in order that the new man in Christ might be vivified. As such, in a Christian cosmology there might be those who would confess that they struggle against sin and who might even admit that they have been made a “eunuch for the Kingdom,” (Mt. 19:12) but they would not identify themselves — their persons — with their sinful inclinations. St. Paul reveals this kind of mindset in his letter to the Corinthians when he, speaking of those who have been redeemed from such sinful lifestyles,

9 Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality,

10 Nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor greedy graspers, nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and slanderers, nor extortioners and robbers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.

11 And such some of you were [once]. But you were washed clean (purified by a complete atonement for sin and made free from the guilt of sin), and you were consecrated (set apart, hallowed), and you were justified [pronounced righteous, by trusting] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the [Holy] Spirit of our God.

Note that their identity has changed. They no longer are foulmouthed revilers and slanderers or those who participate in homosexuality. They are now known simply as Christian. They once were the old man but now they are the new man.

In a Christian cosmology it is true that all the saints are sinners but it is also true that in a Christian cosmology no Christian, who is self conscious of their identity in Christ identifies themselves with that sin from which they’ve been delivered. They identify themselves with Christ because they’ve been washed.

2.) Another difference between the Christian cosmology and the sodomite cosmology, when it is played out to its fullest implication, is that in the Christian cosmology how people engage their sexuality cannot be divorced from their Christianity. In the Christian cosmology sexuality is disciplined and harnessed by the Christian faith. In the the sodomite cosmology absolute individual freedom of sexual expression is the center around which all other considerations must orbit. Note the distinction here between a Christian cosmology and a sodomite cosmology is that in the former there are sexuality prohibitions that are part and parcel of the Christian cosmology while in the sodomite cosmology, as it comes into its own, it is only sexuality prohibitions that are prohibited. In the Christian cosmology lust is sin and is to be confessed and denied. In the sodomite cosmology sexual repression is sin and is to be confessed and denied.

3.) In the historic Christian cosmology anthropology and sexuality are bound up together. Man without a helpmeet woman is incomplete (where he or she is not gifted with singleness) and man is not complete until woman is taken from him, fashioned anew, and returned to him in marital union. This historical imagery is so integral to the Christian cosmology that it is taken up in the New Testament with its testimony that the male female union relationship is a reflection of Christ’s relationship with the Church. In the Christian cosmology this male female relationship is fruitful and is to the end of glorifying God and raising faithful covenant children. Sodomy overturns all this cosmology and anthropology for a cosmology and anthropology that teaches that sexual intimacy is not unique to a male and a female and that sexual union is by definition sterile apart from technological contrivances.

4.) The cosmology of Christianity and the cosmology of sodomy are in antithesis and so are incompatible with one another. If there is an attempt to mix them together the end result will only be semantic deception. By semantic deception what is meant is that any mixing of these two antithetical cosmologies will result in the language of Christianity being retained but emptied of its historic orthodox Christian meaning in favor of meaning that is subservient to the cosmology of sodomy. The results will be a retention of Christian jargon but only as that jargon is emptied of its objective historic Christian meaning.

5.) The whole issue of sodomy is so important because it is not just about who is sleeping with whom. I really couldn’t care less about that. The whole issue of sodomy is so important because if the LGBT – sodomy agenda is to overthrow standard historic Christian cosmology then everything changes. If the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins the day it is not merely a matter of a slight alteration in our social order. No, if the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins historic Christianity is thrown off completely and with the embrace of the new sodomite cultus a new culture and social order is born that is opposed to Christ and His Kingdom.

At this point it appears that the sodomite cosmology might win in the short term. It has been steamrolling since the enlightenment in one form or another. However, in the long term it can not win because it is a cosmology of death.

Iron Ink Archives Support Rev. Bayly’s Exposure Of R2K Spin

Over at the Bayly Blog

http://baylyblog.com/blog/2013/06/theological-critique-escondido-two-kingdoms-theology-viii-machen-was-culture-warrior

Rev. Bayly gets in the R2K boys’ Kitchen. Of course we have been writing the very same thing for years now. See excerpts below.

However, one key thing that needs to be taken from Rev. Bayly’s article and my own excerpts is that the R2K chaps are hack Historians when they try to claim Machen as “proto-R2K.” Machen wasn’t proto R2K and for Historian, Dr. D. G. Hart, and the rest of the “R2K Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight” to suggest that Machen was R2K is worse then disinformation and propaganda. It is Libel of the dead.

Historians are supposed to deal with all the information on a person’s life and seek to either harmonize it or leave the contradictions exposed. Historians are not supposed to cut and paste someone’s life to fit their preconceived political agenda. (And R2K is a political agenda, despite its constant screaming that Churchmen shouldn’t be involved in disputes concerning political agendas.)

So, a hat tip to Rev. Bayly for exposing R2K again.

See below links and excerpted portions from Iron Ink previous engagements with R2K in years past for supplementary material that supports the Bayly Blog’s exposure of R2K.

October 18th 2011

This post title is “J. Gresham Machen … Does Not Know, Nor Has Ever Heard Of R2K”

Christianity and Culture – “Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the Gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the Gospel. For making it subservient, religious emotion is not enough, intellectual labor is also necessary. And that labor is being neglected. The Church has turned to easier tasks. And now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life.”

J. Gresham Machen
1912 centennial commemorative lecture at Princeton Seminary

“Instead of obliterating the distinction between the Kingdom and the world, or on the other hand withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically to make the world subject to God.”

~J. Gresham Machen

June 30th 2009

This post title is “Cleaning Out The Outhouse”

Recently Steve Zrimec over at “The Confessional Outhouse” was bored enough to pay attention to something I wrote on Iron Ink. Steve Zrimec is, in many respects, the theological antithesis to myself. He is the Joker to my Batman … the Stalin to my Churchill … the ying to my yang.

I thought I would go ahead and respond to some of Steve’s prattling and so provide a service by cleaning the the Outhouse.

Steve started by quoting one of his heroes, and a sometime foil of mine, Dr. D. G. Hart. This quote comes from Hart’s book on Machen. (Which I have read.)

“Machen was indeed concerned about the dangers that “cultural modernism” posed to traditional faith. But he was even more worried about the “modernism” of American Protestantism and the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested. For Machen, the moves by Protestants to “modernize” the faith—and not the efforts of “cultural modernists” to move beyond Christianity—comprised the greatest danger to Christianity. For by refashioning Christianity mainline Protestants hoped to maintain the churches’ role as cultural guardian. But in the process, Machen believed, they had confused influence with faithfulness. In fact, he held that theological integrity and cultural authority were inversely related: a theology eager for public influence invariably compromised the Christian faith, while a principled theology could at best benefit society indirectly.”

The problem here for gentlemen like Hart and Zrimec is that they continue to be confused on the issue of culture. Hart speaks here of Machen being more concerned about the “modernism” of American Protestantism and the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested than he was over the dangers of cultural modernism. But what Hart misses is that these two concerns are not unrelated. The same alien theological premises that were driving cultural modernism were driving the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested. Machen could inveigh against the dangers of both because the dangers were one at the root. The attempts by protestants to modernize grew out of the same soil that found cultural modernists attempting to move beyond Christianity. Zrimec and Hart can’t really believe that the anti-supernatural premises of the protestant modernists were unrelated to the anti-supernatural premises of those wanting to move beyond Christianity.

It is perfectly understandable that Machen was more concerned about the unfaithfulness in the Church over and above the unfaithfulness in the culture since a trained mind would understand that there would be no recalling the culture from its modernists assumptions if the Church became wrapped in those same modernist assumptions.

The only place I would correct Machen (or perhaps correct Hart’s conclusions on Machen) is on Hart’s final observation. The scripture is full of prophets who were eager for their theology to have public influence who did not compromise. Has Hart never read the major or minor prophets? History likewise is full of men who were eager for their theology to have public influence who did not compromise. Has Hart never read of Hus, or Wycliffe and the Lollards or Bunyan?

I would say instead that a theology eager for public influence invariably compromises the Christian faith, when the theology eager for public influence is willing to accommodate to the culture as the Protestant re-fashioners of Christianity were doing during the modernist controversy.

This quote from Hart by Zrimec does nothing to overthrow anything I said that was quoted at the Confessional Outhouse. Indeed, I would say this quote supports my analysis of the relationship of cult and culture that Zrimec cites dismissively.

“Machen’s cultural concerns, thus, made him in the 1920s a reluctant ally of secular intellectuals but in the 1930s would cost him the support of the fundamentalists. Like Machen, though for different reasons, cultural modernists also bristled under mainstream Protestantism’s moral code, rejected its cheery estimate of human nature and the universe, and opposed its bid to Christianize American society. The subtext of Machen’s theological critique of Protestant modernism—that the churches had no business meddling in society—was good news to the secularists who thought that America’s Protestant ethos impeded intellectual and cultural life. Fundamentalists, in contrast, were virtually deaf to Machen’s ideas about the relationship between Christianity and culture. To most conservatives throughout the 1920s, Machen was a champion of orthodoxy who had reestablished the theological foundations for Christian civilization in America. By the 1930s, however, his understanding of the church’s limited role in public life began to alienate fundamentalists. When Machen’s efforts to reform the Presbyterian Church were finally thwarted and he withdrew in 1936 to form a new denomination, his new church attracted few fundamentalists. They stayed away at least in part because they, unlike Machen, shared with modernizing Protestants the belief that Christian values constituted the bedrock of American society.”

D.G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America

Machen’s conviction on the relationship between Christianity and culture had a strong flavor of the classical liberalism that Machen grew up under as a son of the South. Machen was as opposed to using the State to force a top down regime of Christianity as we was opposed to using the State to force a top down regime of pagansim. Any reading of Machen’s writings on education easily confirms this. The difference between Machen and the fundamentalists can more be accounted by Machen’s embrace of classical liberalism vs. the fundamentalists embrace of the idea of using the state to force their agenda. Machen, like any good theonomist today, desired men to turn to Christ and a Christian social ethic apart from any governmental coercion.

Machen understood, as Hart says above, that Christianity’s influence should be indirect. Indirect in the sense that people take up Christianity by the coercive will of God and not by the coercive will of the State. Indirect in the sense that a self governing Christian people will, by default, live out Christian principles as they move in the public square.

But all because Christian influence is indirect doesn’t mean it isn’t potent, real or substantial and neither does it mean that those who see no Christian influence in the broader culture shouldn’t decry the absence of that indirect influence or that Christians shouldn’t advocate the resurrection of that indirect influence, or that Christians shouldn’t complain that the current Church refuses to trace out what these indirect influences look like where a vibrant Christianity exists.

Steve Zrimec wrote in conclusion

“In other words, while natural religion is important to make the world go ‘round, Christianity serves another, more counter-intuitive purpose, namely the reconciliation of sinners to God. Arguably, this really was the supreme contribution Machen made: true religion has no obvious implication for or direct bearing on the cares of this world; it is irrelevant to the traditions of men no matter how he conceives of them and no matter how important they may be to this present life; it does not make bad people (or their cultures) good or good people (or their cultures) better; while it certainly has one resident within it, Christianity is certainly not a way of life.”

All natural religions seek to reconcile sinners to god. The problem is that the god is an idol and the reconciliation to that false idol leaves one unreconciled to the God of the Bible. Steve seems to miss this idea.

Also note that Steve’s gnostic Christianity leaves the corporeal material realm where we do most of our living in the hands of some natural religion. Steve concedes that natural religion makes the world go around and by so doing implies that supernatural religion doesn’t accomplish that. In point of fact both natural religion and supernatural religion are both in the business of reconciliation and in making the world go around.

Steve also in the blockquote above completely rules out the power of the Holy Spirit to remake men increasingly in the image of God. Christianity, according to Steve, does not make bad people good and this despite the constant calls of Scripture to put off the old man and put on the new man created in the image of God.

True religion, “having no obvious implication for or direct bearing on the cares of this world,” does not have anything to say on how families raise their children, on what Marriage looks like, on how children should be educated, or on how a Christian people comport themselves in the public square. Steve’s eschatology is all “not yet” and is gnostically unrealized.

Steve finishes by throwing a Right hay maker,

“Not everyone seems convinced that Machen was onto something though. Contra Machen, the suggestion here is that Christianity creates culture and that good culture is dependent upon an unadulterated Christianity.

If this isn’t an example of “alienated fundamentalism” I’m hard-pressed to know what is.”

Steve’s theology takes us to cultural relativism. Since all of culture is driven by natural religion it makes little difference which of the natural religion is in the drivers seat. There is no way to adjudicate between good culture and not good culture since it is all natural religion driven.

If Steve’s theology isn’t an example of gnostic fundamentalism I’m hard pressed to know what is.

November 08, 2012

R2K Fundamentalism

Darryl Hart writes to one Doug Sowers,

You are doing what Machen’s critics did, assuming he was in favor or drunkenness because he opposed Prohibition.

This is why you are a fundamentalist. You only see one side of an issue. Gay marriage bad. But legislating gay marriage, or the church taking a stand on gay marriage involves laws and officers and members in a host of organizational relationships that go beyond the morality of homosexuality. But for you, it’s a black and white issue and you don’t care what comes with efforts to oppose it, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny.

Bret responds to Dr. D. Gnostic Hart,

1.) Notice how Dr. Hart has now embraced the position of Irons and Bordow who advocate theoretical Christians advancing the it is permissible for Homosexuality or Bestiality to be approvingly legislated for the public square even if they themselves (Bordow, Irons, and now Hart) don’t advocate it or believe it themselves. If this is not public square anti-nomianism then none exists.

2.) Notice how Dr. Hart places politically active “Christians” in the public square, who advance the permissibility of a social order that allows and gives place for deviancy and perversion (as defined by Scripture), under the umbrella of “Liberty.” Of course this is to redefine liberty as license.

3.) Dr. Hart invokes Machen but Hart is comparing apples and sodomites here when he compares Machen’s opposition to Prohibition and Biblical Christians opposition to other Christians advocating the permissibility of perversion in the public square (even if those same Christians personally oppose such perversion). The reason this is a apple and sodomite comparison is that Machen’s position was that he could not oppose something that God’s word permitted. God’s word does not forbid the usage of alcohol and therefore Machen knew he could not support prohibiting what God allowed. Darryl is trying to advance a position where it is wrong to oppose, in the public square, a prohibition that God details in His word. It is not the same thing for Machen to oppose supporting (Prohibition) what God didn’t prohibit and Biblical Christians opposing for the public square what God opposes. As I said, Darryl’s comparison is Apples and Sodomites.

4.) Of course it is Dr. D. Gnostic Hart who is the Fundamentalist here. Darryl is a Gnostic Fundamentalist. He is only seeing the Gnostic side of the issue. The implication of what Darryl is invoking is the idea that it is perfectly acceptable for a Christian Doctor to preform Abortions if he is “in a host of organizational relationships” (such as a Hospital that does abortions) “that go beyond the morality of abortion.” For Darryl this is a White and Gray issue. White — Personally and individually these things bad. Gray — In the Public square these things require “liberty.” Darryl doesn’t care what comes with efforts to oppose perversion, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny that forces Christians to accept these perversions in the public square and forces them to accept people who accept the acceptability of these perversions in the Church (even if those people don’t themselves approve them personally and individually).

The Enlightenment Nation State Myth

“If the struggle between state-building elites and other powers like the church predates the Reformation by at least a century, however, it may be that state-building process is not as innocent of the ensuing (putatively “religious”) violence as the myth of the religious wars makes it out to be. Is it possible that the state-building process is not simply the solution but a contributing cause of the violence of the 16th and 17th centuries.”

Wm. T. Vaughn
The Myth of Religious Violence — pg. 141

Vaughn is advancing the idea that the burgeoning modern Nation States of the 16th century contributed significantly to the what the bureaucrats and court historians of the modern Nation States later styled as “The Religious wars of the 16th and 17th century.” Vaughn is contending that in the contest between the growing Nation States and the existence of various expressions of Christianity (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism) what the Nations States did, once they vanquished Christianity to a “private realm,” and a pietistic interior existence is to have labeled all the violence of the 16th and 17th centuries as “religious wars.” They were able to do so as victors in the contest between themselves and the Church and it served their purpose to do so because in doing so they would forever be able to use the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century,” which they contributed to and used to advance their agenda, as cautionary tales against letting the Church ever have any influence in a public square that they now dominated with their victory over the Church. Living out of this Worldview accounts for why R2K chaps like Dr. R. Scott Clark can bring up the specter of “the Religious wars of the 16th and 17th century” to warn against Constantinianism. Later in history the Enlightenment codified this victory of the Modern Nation state over the Church and pressed ever more, over the ensuing centuries, the idea of “separation of Church and State.”

By relegating the Church to the “private realm,” in the repeated telling of the dreaded tale of the “religious wars” of the 16th and 17th century, the State is able to practice its ideology (which amounts to a masked religion) in order to conform the citizenry according to its anti-Christ ideology in as much as it owns the public square in an uncontested manner. By this method the modern Nation State has conceded to the Church the souls of the citizenry as long as they could have their bodies and minds.

Of course what we are seeing as this myth of religious wars is exposed is that the modern pagan Nation State dwarfs the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century,” in terms of the deadly, the destructive and the life-taking. One has only to consider all the blood of the 20th century in putatively non-religious wars. Why should we be afraid of the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century” — wars that found the burgeoning Nation State as being contributory — when one considers the piles of dead bodies in the Holdomar, of the Armenians by the Turks and of the tens of millions murdered by Mao?

Obama and the “Morning After Pill.”

“Exquisite little creature!” said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, “What I’m going to tell you now,” he said, “may sound incredible. But then, when you’re not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible.”

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.

“Even adolescents,” the D.H.C. was saying, “even adolescents like yourselves …”

“Not possible!”

“Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality–absolutely nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“In most cases, till they were over twenty years old.”

“Twenty years old?” echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.

“Twenty,” the Director repeated. “I told you that you’d find it incredible.”

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
Chapter 3

With Obama’s decision to allow the “morning after pill” to be available over the counter for all ages without question or Identification we find ourselves pushed one step closer to Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where sex is a indiscriminate past-time and casual recreation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/plan-b-morning-after-pill?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position1

Random thoughts on the Obama administration allowing children to access the “morning after” pill.

1.) The State pushes indiscriminate sex because such sex destroys the ability of young people to properly bond and form familial loyalties. It is in the interest of the Totalitarian State to destroy all loyalties that might compete with loyalty to the State. By pushing casual sex the Progressive Marxists ensure that no interpersonal loyalties will be formed that will challenge their ability to rule.

2.) The end effect of encouraging meaningless sex is to destroys the whole idea of attached intimacy and dehumanizes the participants by reducing sex to a physical and animal act. The spiritual component of sex being destroyed, the destruction of man’s spirituality is significantly advanced. Man himself begins to think of himself only in terms of his physical lusts and desires. Men who have lost the sense of their spiritual significance are men who think of themselves as no more than cattle. Cattle are easily herded and controlled by the Elite Farmers.

3.) When sex becomes meaningless, and emotion drained out of the act by virtue of the impersonal nature and randomness of the sex act the sense of moral oughtness is seared so that the State can advance other immoralities that will go un-protested by those whose emotional life is barren. It does not take much to convince those, for whom unattached serial sex is morally inconsequential, that any number of other moral outrages as endorsed by the State are acceptable.

4.) The casualness of sex that is being pushed communicates the idea that everyone belongs to everyone. There is a strong strain of communalism in all this. But of course if everybody belongs to everybody then nobody belongs uniquely to anybody. The sense of belongingness is not accentuated but is diminished in the pursuit of sex as a meaningless function of reductionistic human physicality.

5.) Keep your eyes peeled for an increase of rape in our culture because of these kinds of actions. We are already seeing rape on the rise in our military,

http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/16823-rape-culture-at-the-us-naval-academy

If it really is the case that everybody belongs to everybody then it can hardly be considered a crime or even unusual if some begin to take that idea seriously.

6.) The advocacy of normalizing random, regular, and routine sex has the advantage of keeping the Goyim’s mind preoccupied with where he or she will find their next sex opportunity. Minds that are preoccupied with sex are minds that are not preoccupied with thought that is not approved by the State. Fixating the minds of the citizenry on sex is part of the bread and circuses routine that insure independent thought does not arise.

7.) Of course this is all about the Transvaluation of values. The time is coming when being monogamous or perhaps even heterosexual will be seen as pornographic and obscene. Taboos will be reversed so that a young lady who holds her virtue will be mocked and a man who respects women will be lampooned.

8.) A significant part of what makes for Christian categories of Male and Female gender roles is the idea that men are to respect women and women are to be protected by men. When sex is a random commodity men have no incentive to either respect or protect women. Protect them from what? Respect them for what reason? Indiscriminate sex thus goes a long way towards destroying gender roles thus again ensuring the destruction of Christian culture in favor of the unitary Marxist God State.

9.) All of this is suggestive of the anarcho-tyranny that Samuel Francis warned about years ago. In anarcho-tyranny states the FEDS encourage anarchy for libertine and criminal behavior while punishing the law abiding for non-criminal actions. As such we live under the rule of an anarcho-tyrannical Government that desires to, and in some cases has successfully criminalize(d) the ownership of guns, hemp, raw milk, and eggs, while at the same time encouraging and making provision for Mothers killing their babies by a pill and a glass of water.

Of course if your religion is R2K you can’t speak to this as a minister because these kinds of matters are not within the bailiwick of the ministers calling. Instead, you must tell your people that the Christian faith was never intended to transform or impact culture.

R. Scott Clark … “The Constantinians are Coming … The Constantinians are Coming.”

Surrounded By Constantinians

In this article Dr. R. Scott Clark hyperventilates about the dangers of Constantinism. (It is interesting that the term “Constantinian Shift” was popularized by the anabaptist Theologian, Dr. John H. Yoder, and that many of his complaints against Constantinism are the same complaints that are raised by R2K advocates.)

Now Constantinism is the process by which Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion in the 4th century. Dr. R. S. Clark (RSC) believes that Constantinism is a bad thing and goes on from there to advocate for a social order setting where no religion has primacy for our social order. What RSC desires is religious pluralism.

Of course if RSC achieved the pure religious pluralism he desires at that very point there would be a non Christian Constantinianism that would be in place. You see, Constantinianism is an inescapable category. It is not possible to have a social order that is not reflective of some prior religious commitment. It is not possible to have a social order that is not serving some God, gods, or god concept. RSC’s desire for religious pluralism finds him championing for a State that would serve as God, with the god-like authority to dictate to the other gods how far they can go in the public square. RSC’s god (the State) will not allow any other God to displace its authority in the public square.

Right now the name of the god in Charge, were we to put a name on this god, is “Demos.” The people are God and the voice of the people is the voice of God. The State makes Demos’ will known and Demos controls all the other gods in the public square dictating to them how far they can and can not go.

I affirm that a people can have a Government that is not controlled by any one denomination but I note that the nature of reality does not allow one to have a Government that is a-religious and that is not controlled by some god or God concept.

RSC thinks we live in Pluralism. Does anyone agree with that? Isn’t it past obvious that multiculturalism and multi-creedalism and pluralism is a mono-cultural and mono-creedal expression that confesses that the only gods are welcome in the public square are the gods who know their place before the Unitarian God-State? All this multiculturalism, multi-creedalism and religious pluralism is giving us a new mono-culture that we will all be forced to subscribe to or else we will be put in the closet or worse. Does a Christian insist that the God of the Bible should be the God who rules over the public square? Well, then the R2K god of religious pluralism must shut the God of the Bible down so that all the Gods can bow before the rule and sway of the R2K god.

Scott and the other Enlightenment Democratic R2K’ers can not be allowed to get away with the argument that something called pluralism exists. It doesn’t. We are living through times that prove that Pluralism is a myth. Are you a Christian who owns a bakery or a florist shop and you do not want to service sodomite customers? Then the R2K god of religious pluralism must teach the God of the Bible that He has to make room for the god of the sodomites.

http://gawker.com/gay-couple-files-discrimination-complaint-against-color-511814443

http://www.worldmag.com/2013/04/florist_fights_lawsuit_for_refusing_gay_wedding

Hard pluralism, which RSC thumps for, is a myth and has been used as a cover and invoked for nearly the entire 20th century as a smokescreen to overturn a increasingly receding Christian social order in favor of a pagan social order that by means of and in the name of pluralism has successfully accomplished their long march through the Institutions.

Soft religious pluralism worked here as long as it did because even though the colonialists were people of many assorted denominations there existed a sweet spot among them where they could all find guarded agreement. That sweet spot was the fact that they all were generically Christian. R2K is trying to recreate that anabaptist vision (go read your Roger Williams). The Enlightenment vision, the anabaptist vision, and the R2K vision for social order have great overlap.

The venerable Dr. G. I. Williamson underscored this thinking recently in a comment he left at Dr. Nelson Kloosterman’s blog,

“Since the American experiment in the political sphere both Reformed and Presbyterian bodies have modified their historic Confessions (Belgic Art. 36 & WCF Ch. 33). I could be wrong, but I think the dazzling success of the U.S. in earlier history was the catalyst for these Confessional Changes. And the longer I’ve lived the more I’ve been driven to wonder if we did not err in making this shift as great as it has been. The Reformation itself was promoted (one could even say ‘made possible, humanly speaking’) by the actions of favorable Civil Government. The Synod of Dordt and the Westminster Assembly were both brought into existence by (or at least with the cooperation of) civil rulers. Even then there was a care to see to it that these civil rulers kept their hands off the word, sacraments and discipline, but, at the same time, they were told (by the Reformed churches) that they had a duty to God (the true God) and his church. And I find it difficult to see why it was necessary to reduce the right of the church to tell them what their duty is, or of their sacred duty to protect and even promote the honor of the name which is above every name. Furthermore, even in the OPC/RCNZ version of the WCF we still say the magistrate is “under him [the true God, and] for his glory and the public good.” Well, now, who is to define these terms? Is it good to approve of the homosexual lifestyle? The WCF further says “they [civil rulers, that is] ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace” – well, how on earth can they do that if they are not helped to understand what these words mean? The problem is, of course, that the revision of 23:3 seems to me to open the door to complete pluralism.

It worked well when Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians etc., all had a lot in common. But just look at the chaos now!

I have been strongly influenced by two fine studies by Dr. Gary North, in which he shows (1) that 12 of the original 13 colonies that became the USA originally required those who would serve in civil office to acknowledge the triune God; (2) that this was discarded at and by (in the secret meetings of) the Continental Congress, because of the strong influence of the Free Masons (one of which was none other than George Washington himself); and (3) the result was a Constitution which – at best – is Deistic, and in principle paving the way for the present total pluralistic chaos. [I urge you to read Dr. North’s book entitled ‘Political Polytheism.’] For nearly 200 years the USA still ‘looked like’ – and in many respects was – a Christian Nation. Why? Because there was a strong Bible believing presence – Protestant Churches that preached and (by discipline) enforced the Word of God. But when that began to crumble (big time about of my birth in 1925) there was nothing to hold back or restrain the inherent wickedness of the Adamic nature. So the question is: What are we to do now? And it seems to me that there is only one possible answer. We must speak. We must say to all men of our generation – high or low, small or great – that the day of judgment is coming, and that what they are doing is wrong and that those who have served as civil rulers will one day be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ who is – whether they like it or not – the King of kings and Lord of lords…”

We can not go back to the Pluralism of Colonial America. That magic lamp has been busted by the influx of Rapacious Humanists, Muslims, and “Secular” Jews and that pluralism — the pluralism of the Enlightenment project — lies shattered in the nation’s past.

Elsewhere in RSC’s article RSC complains about those who, “want to go back to Constantinianism, the arrangement whereby the magistrate establishes a state church and enforces Christian orthodoxy.”

In response to this let us note,

1.) One does not have to support Establishmentarianism in order to believe that the magistrate has a responsibility to rule in keeping with God’s revelation. The legislating of law does not necessitate the creation of a State Church.

2.) RSC is opposed to the magistrate enforcing Christian law. As that is so, what law would RSC have the magistrate enforce? Is there an law from nowhere that can be successfully enforced? What now of your Van Tillian “no neutrality” RSC? Is it possible to have law that is not reflective of some God or god concept? If not law reflective of the mind of God then law reflective of what other god’s mind?

RSC, in his article, writes, “As modernity leavened the culture, Christianity was gradually displaced as the reigning paradigm.” I agree but what RSC doesn’t ask is, “as Christianity was gradually displaced as the reigning paradigm what new religion replaced Christianity as the reigning paradigm?” Remember, Van Til does not allow us to answer that it was replaced by “neutrality.” Some other religion replaced Christianity as the reigning paradigm and that religion and the god of that religion became the source of law.

RSC presses on in his article by citing Kuyper on the dangers of Constantinianism because it often returns upon the heads of the non-heretics. The problem with that “insight” is that RSC misses that his current religious pluralism has its own version of “heretic” that it murders by the millions. The heretics of RSC’s religious pluralism are called “unborn babies.”

Elsewhere in his article RSC waves the bloody shirt of religious wars. I would recommend to RSC, as a corrective on this point, William T. Cavanaugh’s “The Myth of Religious Violence.” Cavanaugh goes to great lengths to expose how religion has been blamed for bloodshed by the modern Enlightenment State that desires to keep itself in the ascendancy in order to keep religion at bay. RSC’s invoking of this myth ends up supporting the true god of his R2K … the modern State. (I highly recommend reading Cavanaugh’s book.)

RSC then invokes a argument from silence in the NT to prove that Constantinianism is wrong. I wonder how RSC reacts when Baptist invoke the argument from silence in the NT to prove that babies should not be baptized? There is also no words in the NT prohibiting necrophilia. Does RSC believe that necrophilia as such is acceptable today? Then there is always Belgic Confession #36 that does say that the Magistrate has a role in promoting the Kingdom of God. RSC is always chattering about recovering the Reformed Confessions. Maybe he would like to recover Belgic #36? To suggest that the NT must repeat OT truths or else the silence proves the OT truths are no longer truths is a strange way for a putatively Reformed person (and Doctor of the Church to boot) to argue.

RSC then, in his article fretting over the Constantinians, invokes Calvin in support of his position. Well, let’s see what Calvin had to say about these matters,

The French Confession

XXXIX. We believe that God wishes to have the world governed by laws and magistrates,[1] so that some restraint may be put upon its disordered appetites. And as he has established kingdoms, republics, and all sorts of principalities, either hereditary or otherwise, and all that belongs to a just government, and wishes to be considered as their Author, so he has put the sword into the hands of magistrates to suppress crimes against the first as well as against the second table of the Commandments of God. We must therefore, on his account, not only submit to them as superiors,[2] but honor and hold them in all reverence as his lieutenants and officers, whom he has commissioned to exercise a legitimate and holy authority.

1. Exod. 18:20-21; Matt. 17:24-27; Rom. ch. 13
2. I Peter 2:13-14; I Tim. 2:2

And again,

“But this was sayde to the people of olde time. Yea, and God’s honour must not be diminished by us at this day: the reasons that I have alleadged alreadie doe serve as well for us as for them. Then lette us not thinke that this lawe is a speciall lawe for the Jewes; but let us understand that God intended to deliver to us a generall rule, to which we must tye ourselves…Sith it is so, it is to be concluded, not onely that is lawefull for all kinges and magistrates, to punish heretikes and such as have perverted the pure trueth; but also that they be bounde to doe it, and that they misbehave themselves towardes God, if they suffer errours to roust without redresse, and employ not their whole power to shewe a greater zeale in that behalfe than in all other things.”

Calvin, Sermons upon Deuteronomie, p. 541-542

RSC, is just wrong. Dreadfully, painfully, and perspicuously wrong.

But we’ve come to expect that from R2K.