Apologetics – Page 12

Talking About Natural Law

Fallen man remains God’s man and as Gods man fallen man remains the fingerprint of God. However, fallen man hates God and by extension hates himself as the fingerprint of God. Therefore fallen man both knows God and doesn’t know God. Ontologically fallen man cannot get away from the realities of who he is. However, fallen man uses his epistemological apparatus to deny what he can’t escape ontologically. In Romans this is called “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” This epistemological suppressing the truth in unrighteousness is applied to all of creation and nature since all creation and nature likewise are fingerprinted with the finger of their creator and as such the real meaning and truth of them must be suppressed and denied. The further fallen man becomes consistent with his suppression the more God’s creative reality must be assaulted and denied. This explains the current perplexity where a sitting Supreme Court justice and countless others like her no longer can answer the question; “What is a woman.” Fallen man cannot answer this question because even though fallen man cannot escape ontological reality, he will, by the usage of his epistemological apparatus suppress and deny what he can’t escape from knowing.

When a whole culture is given over to this consistent denial and suppressing of Natural Law givens the result eventually will be death, because all those who hate God love death.

However, cultures strewn with the unregenerate can be stabilized by the presence of believers who are not suppressing reality and who read Natural Law aright because they are reading it through the lens of Special Revelation. In such cultures and in such cases what happens is that fallen man, being inconsistent with his self avowed God denying principles, sneaks into his Christ hating worldview capital from the Christian world and life view. This stolen capital keeps the unbeliever afloat so that, as one example, in a culture leavened with Christ (a Christian culture) they can make marriages that last and are comparatively stable.

In such a culture stabilized by a Christian ethos you would then expect there to arise a philosophy that embraced Natural Law because then the stability of the culture can be ascribed to man who reads NL aright instead of being ascribed to the Biblical beliefs of the Christians in the social order. However, all along, the epoxy of the social order is special revelation.

In such a culture, Christian thinkers themselves may well begin to talk about Natural Law as being the epoxy that allows Christians and fallen man to together create a stable social order. However, if those same Christian thinkers could live long enough lives to see the deterioration of their once stable cultures because the Christ hater began to be more and more consistent with their suppressing the truth in unrighteousness they would then realize that it was not Natural Law that was the epoxy that held the culture together but rather it was the explicit special revelation that was embraced by them and their kind that created a sturdy headwind that allowed the unregenerate to sneak that earlier spoken of stolen capital into their worldviews in order to keep stability in the culture leavened with Christ.

If the above isn’t helpful try to reverse engineer all of this. Imagine growing up in a Cannibalistic adulterous ridden culture where treachery and treason were exalted as genius and so was untouched by Biblical Christianity. Could anyone imagine that such fallen people would ever come up with a Natural law that taught the precepts found in the 10 commandments?

Of course the problem here is never with God’s natural revelation of which Natural Law is a subset. The heavens do indeed declare the handiwork of God. All of creation screams the truth of God. However, fallen man is like the chap who is constantly pushing the buttons in order to find a radio station that doesn’t play “the truth of God’s revelation.” Fallen man, becoming increasingly consistent with his enmity against God (Romans 8:7) would go as far as to rip his own eyeballs out in order to not see the truth contained in Natural Law.

Because of this Natural Law is a weak reed in order to lean on to make law for a particular social order populated by a large majority of people who are being ever more increasingly consistent with their hatred of Christ. We are seeing this daily in the West.

For Christians in the West then, the appeal is not to Natural Law. The appeal is to the politicus usus of God’s perspicuous Law in order to order social order aright. This, in combination of heralding the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to pull back anti-Christ social orders from the edge of the abyss. Appeals to Natural Law will only hasten our nearing, ever nearing, to the final fall.

Biden’s First 2024 Campaign Ad … White People Beware

Biden’s first campaign ad for 2024 has just been released and it is clear that the man is running a racial campaign.

So much cynicism.

1.) Biden is asking everyone to vote for him to support “Democracy,” and yet this Republic was built by men who often commented on how much they hated Democracy.

2.) Biden is the one who stole election 2020 and yet in this ad he is the one who is saying he is going to protect 2024 election so that everyone can vote “fairly.” He is going to make sure every vote counts. This is a twist on Alinsky where you imply you’re going to protect the electorate from what you were guilty of doing last election cycle.

3.) This is a purely racial. Note at the beginning of the ad when it talks about protecting people’s votes that the ad shows minority faces or a single mother w/ two children voting. However at the 31 second mark when Biden says “There’s something dangerous happening in America” suddenly all we see are white faces. White people are the danger.

4.) There is a flashback to MLK “I have a dream speech.” More dog whistling communicating that Biden is running an anti-White campaign.

5.) At 50 seconds Biden tells us that our children are watching and we flash to a picture of two minority children on a bus who are front and center in the photo.

6.) There is a flash photo scene of white people marching in a Nazi parade.

Watch this video scene by scene. You will see that Biden is campaigning on the need to stop White people.

Chrissy Gordon on Moscow’s Mood … McAtee on Chrissy’s Mood

Well, about a month ago Rev. Chris Gordon wrote a piece attacking the attackers of Kevin DeYoung’s simpering piece complaining about Doug Wilson’s tone.

Gordon did us the favor of drilling down to the real nature of the controversy. Gordon and the Wimp Reformed establishment HATES postmillennialism. That is the real reason behind their loathing of Doug Wilson.

Now, having said that, I concede that Gordon has a point about Wilson’s Federal Vision pukefest theology but, let’s be honest here Chrissy, no one should be complaining about Federal Vision who doesn’t rail against R2K. But of course you won’t do that since you are sympathetic to R2K. So,
Gordon prefers his heresy over Wilson’s. Stalemate.

So, it seems the challenge is for Amills to practice Optimistic Amillennialism and so give up R2K and for Postmills to keep on practicing their edgy Postmillennialism while not allowing people like Wilson to get away with the Federal Vision crap he pushed.

Let everyone clean their own house. I tenaciously criticized Wilson and heretical FV in the day. Chrissy has not said squat about R2K heretical theology.

Who will take out the R2K garbage. I know Chrissy won’t.

Elsewhere Gordon offers,

“DeYoung expressed, “Pugnacity and jocularity are not the occasional and unfortunate by-products of the brand; they are the brand.” He’s exactly correct. As Christendom has collapsed in the West, Wilson has offered a vision that plays on the fears and emotions of those who are panicking. This is precisely why the mission of the church, all of the sudden, takes a drastic turn in its elevating of cultural transformation while ‘saving people from their sins’ becomes only a means to this greater end.”

Rev. Chrissy Gordon

R2K “Minister”

1.) Could anybody tell me what is wrong with toughness and humor (pugnacity and jocularity) being the type of Christianity one lives? Is this a case where people like DeYoung and Gordon are offended by having a sense of humor?

2.) The Reformed have always believed that “saving people from their sins” is only the means to a greater end. It is the Lutherans, historically, who believed that “saving people from their sins” was the end of the message of the Gospel. Contrary to Lutherans the Reformed always held that “saving people from their sins” was only a means to the higher end of a people determined to live for the glory of God. One of those ways people live for the glory of God is the cultural transformation that is the product of saved people seeking to live for the glory of God.

Whatever Gordon is expressing here (I think it is Lutheranism) this is not the way the Reformed have thought over the centuries.

In other words… Rev. Gordon is just flat out in error here.

“Reformed” “Clergy” and their descent into Idiocy on the Reality of Biology

Below are a series of quotations from “Reformed” “pastors” and “theologians” on the subject of “race.” Shenvi, Wilson, White , MacArthur, Strachan, etc. should not be listened to for one second because they share the same fundamental premise as do those touting Critical Race Theory. Indeed, these chaps only complaint is that they don’t like their CRT being 100 proof. They embrace the primary premise of the WOKE crowd, and that is that race is a social construct with no rootedness in biological reality.

As I’ve said before try to keep in mind how mind numbingly stupid this position is. I know this because when someone who is mixed race comes in for a bone marrow transplant, the Doctors don’t say, “Hey, no problem. Race is a social construct and as such we’ll grab one of our Korean Janitors to give you some bone marrow.” No, when someone needs a bone marrow transplant suddenly race is seen to be as real as it never ceases to be and the poor kid who is mixed race is likely up crap creek in terms of finding a donor.

Denying the biological reality of race is just stupid and the preachers quoted below who embrace this stupidity should be marked out to be avoided. I would even go further and say anybody who makes league with these idiots and recommends them as a good source of truth likewise should be marked out as “there be dragons here.”

It is, of course, true that all people belong to the human race (Acts 17:25). However within the one human race, varying “races” exist — each fully human, each Image Bearers of God, but each a distinct expression of the one human race. Together they communicate the idea of the “One and the Many” triune character of God. Taking one additional step, within these broad racial groups (think in terms of large extended families) there exist different ethnic groups, tribes, and families.

Here is how a Roman Catholic explains this idea based on the teaching of his church:

“Consequently at the same time as acknowledging the diversity and singularity of races, the Church rejects, equally with the racist assertions of radical racial superiority and inferiority, the tendency towards a depreciation and leveling of races found at the opposite extreme. It does this in the confidence that Christianity, grounded in reality and truth, is able to harmonize the affirmation of the radical unity of mankind with the recognition of racial diversity…There can therefore be no better way of combatting racism and racial discrimination, than by a sane and realistic acknowledgement of the facts of race and of historical and cultural inequalities”

Bonaventure Hinwood
Race; Reflections of a Theologian, p. 103

This is all quite conventional and was obvious to everyone with a pair of eyes until roughly three weeks ago. Whatever Doug Wilson and his dimmer acolytes may say… whatever some idiot Seminary professor says … whatever your idiot Pastor says …. holding such views does not constitute heresy and if it does constitute heresy then every Reformed Pastor before appx. 1960 were heretics. Indeed if saying that “race is a real biological category” is heresy then there has been no true Church until we’ve been hoodwinked into believing that race is not real.

And for the quotes that demonstrate that the modern “conservative” Reformed clergy are drinking deeply from the WOKE well.

Save your lives and the lives of your children. RUN from these false shepherds.

“There is only one race. The human race. And so I think races — the whole concept of races — is problematic. The one human race is divided by language. divided by culture, divided by tribes, divided by history.”

Doug Wilson

“I use ‘ethnicity’ because, as we shall see, ‘race’ is not actually a positive biblical reality, but a construct. On this point, ironically, I agree with CRT advocates, much as many of them state that race is a social construct, but then practically operate in many senses as if it is real.”

Owen Strachan

“Concepts of “whiteness” or “blackness” are DESTROYED by the radical equality of every sinner’s need and Christ’s perfect provision. Our identity is NOT determined by our ancestors—we have been transferred out of the kingdom where such relationships rule and divide.”~~James White

“”Race’ is not a biblical category, but rather a social construct that often has been used to classify groups of people in terms of inferiority and superiority.”

Dallas Statement on Social Justice

“One of the sad realities of antiracism is that it is 100 percent correct about race being a construct.”

Voddie Baucham

Inspired by a friend’s post elsewhere. I added a few Carolina Reaper peppers and contributed a few observations of my own.

R. 2K Clark Does His Best Eeyore Impersonation

“In the ensuing discussion on the Heidelfog, one theme has emerged: some American Christians are having a difficult time accepting their new status. They want Christendom back, and some of them want the government to enforce religious orthodoxy to some degree. More than a few either assume that America is a Christian nation or that it was and should be again.2 My postmillennial friends are confident that it will be a Christian nation before Jesus returns.3 Each of these approaches, however, consciously or unconsciously relies on Christendom as the paradigm.”

R2K Clark

Heidelfog

BLMc responds,

1.) Keep in mind that per Scotty Boy, Christendom is literally impossible. Per R2K whatever was once called “Christendom” was never really Christendom because Christendom is not possible. So, given that, how can Scotty boy talk about wanting something back that has never been nor is even possible?

2.) I am left wondering as such, what exactly is it that American Christian’s want back? If Christendom is impossible what does Scotty boy call that which many Christian American’s want back? What exactly has been lost that, per Scotty Boy, we are trying to gain back.

I want Scotty to answer this because I suspect that however Scotty answers this there is going to be a tacit admission that Christendom is possible and if Christendom is possible than R2K is dead in the water. If it really is the case that Christendom once was, then there is no theological reason why Christendom cannot once again be. I don’t think R2K can admit that Christendom once really was since the R2K contingent repeatedly insist that Christian culture (Christendom) is not only not desirable, Christian culture is not possible.

3.) All Governments enforce a religious orthodoxy of some sort. All Governments descend from and support some God or god concept. This means that the Government that Scotty wants, whatever he might call it, will indeed be a Government that enforces some religious orthodoxy. (We know it will be a pagan religion since the last thing Scotty wants is Christianity being enforced by the Government.)

4.) It is irrelevant whether or not America was ever a “Christian nation.” It is irrelevant because “the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” which means that all the nations owe subjection to Jesus Christ regardless of their past. Not only that but Scripture also explicitly teaches Sovereign’s to “Kiss the son lest they perish in the way.”

But let me guess… Per R2K, Jesus died so that King’s are no longer required to give homage to Christ lest they perish in the way.

5.) Scotty hates Christendom but keep in mind that since there is no such thing as neutrality, that Scotty by hating Christendom, loves him some pagandom. With apologies to Robert Zimmerman, Scotty’s cultural vision is going to have to serve somebody. Now it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but his common public square is going to have to serve somebody.

“Whatever the pretensions of some within the confessional Presbyterian and Reformed (P&R) sideline denominations, they are, at best, marginal in American life. There are two kinds of sideliners in the P&R world: those who accept reality and those who do not.”

R2K Clark

Heidelfog blog

BLMc responds,

Understand that R. 2K Clark’s “reality” is tinged by those militant amillennial spectacle the boy has glued to his face. I can well imagine Clark’s voice being used for the Winnie the Pooh character Eeyore whining out, “Never-mind, it wouldn’t help anyway,” or “I don’t suppose it would end up mattering,” or “We’re all gonna’ die.”

https://winniethepooh.disney.com/eeyore-gallery?image_id=52f539890a172d5ba8008733

Can you imagine R2K Clark being with Gideon’s army before the victory against the Midianites? R2K Clark is tugging on Gideon’s cloak and simpering… “But Gideon, you’re just not accepting reality.”

I would sooner listen to Mr. Magoo than I would to R. 2K Clark on the nature of reality.

R. 2K Clark ends his article pleading that we should be like Quadratus in our modern post-Christian culture. Quadratus (or possibly Polycarp — no one knows for sure) gave a reasoned defense of the Gospel before Magistrates mocking the idols and the idolatry of the pagan world. R. 2K Clark insists that were was no attempt to take over the political structures.

And w/ that statement we see how blind and deaf R. 2K Clark is. Just imagine if, at the apologetic and evangelizing of Quadratus the Magistrate had repented.

What next?

Well, obviously what would be next is that Magistrate would being ruling underneath the Sovereignty of King Christ.

R. 2K Clark doesn’t provide another way to engage with the culture than any culture warrior does. All culture warriors understand that the Gospel must be preached. However, they also understand that once Magistrates convert that consequence will be Christendom.

However, culture warriors, further understand that if wicked Magistrates don’t repent that the Scripture gives full allowance for a Christian people to overthrow their wicked magistrates.

And if R. 2K Clark isn’t aware of that he might check out Christopher Goodman’s (an associate w/ John Knox in Scotland) work on Christian resistance to wicked Magistrates.