Category: Apologetics

CRC Defeats Belhar As Confessional Document … Creates Remote Parking Area For Almost Confession

On the evening of 12 June, 2012 the CRC synod defeated the attempt by progressives within the denomination to foster upon the Denomination the Belhar Confession. The news agency of the CRC sought to spin the defeat of the Belhar by offering the headline, “Belhar Yes, Confession No.”

In what looks like a move that assuages the progressive conscience the denomination created a “Ecumenical Faith Declaration” category as a remote parking lot and pulled the Belhar into a parking space where it can be safely ignored and yet can be taken out for a short drive when necessary. Placing the Belhar in the remote parking area allows the denomination to say, “see, we allow all kinds of vehicles to park in our stadium.”

R2K Acolyte Swims The Tiber

http://www.creedcodecult.com/2012/06/heartfelt-farewell-to-pca.html#comment-form

I have nothing but sympathy for Mr. Stellman. I do not intend to gloat over the shipwrecking of his faith. However, I do intend to note that “ideas have consequences.”

Mr. Stellman was a graduate from Westminster West R2K Seminary. Mr. Stellman had drank so deeply from that R2K well that he had even written a book supporting R2K. However what was a trickle in terms of his R2K theology became a Tiberian flood.

R2K holds that Scripture alone is not the norm that norms all norms in the common realm. No sola Scriptura for the common realm for R2K where most of our living is done. If Scripture is not the norm that norms all norms for the common realm, where we do 99% of our living, how much deeper of a dive is it to find that Scripture alone also is not the norm that norms all norms in the the last 1% of our lives in the Redemptive realm? If Natural Law is the norm that norms all norms in the common realm then why not a Church as a norm that norms all norms in the Redemptive realm?

Second, Thomistic Natural Law and the Nature vs. Grace divide that are identity markers of R2K have always been the stock and trade for Rome with its two paths to truth motif. Really, in crossing the Tiber, Mr. Stellman is really only returning home, as the philosophical dualism that informs R2K is Mother’s milk for Rome. Why go with the cheap imitation R2K when you can get the real McCoy with Rome?

Of course the solas of the Reformation stand and fall together. If one gives up sola Scriptura one is sure to give up sola Fide, sola Christus, and Sola Gratia.

But make no mistake about it. Mr. Stellman’s journey to Rome (or Constantinople) was greased by the Thomistic dualism theology that underlies the R2K project. I should not be surprised to be finding others who have embraced R2K taking the plunge.

Linkage In The Theologies of Cultural Marxism & R2K?

The cultural Marxists are forever shrilling over the separation of Church and State. This is because they want to make sure that the public square is kept sanitized of any Christian influence. Meanwhile R2K is also forever shrilling about the separation of common realm from the redemptive realm — two realms that are largely analogous to the Church and State of the Cultural Marxists. The reason why R2K wants the common realm to be recognized as compartmentalized from the redemptive realm is the mirror reason of the Cultural Marxists. As noted above, the cultural Marxists want Church and State separate so Christianity can’t effect and so despoil culture. R2K wants common realm and redemptive realm compartmentalized so none of the common realm leaks into the redemptive realm so despoiling the redemptive realm. Both Cultural Marxism and R2K want to make sure that the realms that they are concerned about stay sanitized from unhealthy influence from the other realm. Both R2K and Cultural Marxism clears the common realm / civil realm from any interference from conservative Christianity and so allows so form of collectivism to rule. Both R2K and Cultural Marxism both believe that the other realm they are not primarily concerned about is not where the real action takes place. (Hence R2K refers to the common realm as “Kingdom of God’s left hand” and Cultural Marxists refer to the Church with any number of epitaphs.) Both R2K and Cultural Marxists are led in their respective attempts to compartmentalize their respective realms by their wise men. Both R2k and Cultural Marxist push their compartmentalization as a non-negotiable item of faith. Both R2K and Cultural Marxism work to silence the voice of Biblical Christianity in the public square. R2K wants it silenced in the name of Christian love for neighbor. Cultural Marxists wants it silenced in the name of Cultural Marxist love for neighbor.

The symbiotic relationship of R2K and Cultural Marxism is so convenient that I can easily see Marxist organizations funding R2K Institutions through popular front movements. In point of fact so symbiotic is the relationship between the two that one wonders if R2K, at it hits the street, is in point of fact a baptized version of Cultural Marxism.

Now, of course it must be realized and admitted that there are differences between Cultural Marxism and R2K as well. Cultural Marxism practices philosophical materialism while R2K leans more towards a Gnostic dualism. Cultural Marxism doesn’t really believe that some realm belongs uniquely to the Church though it is willing to posit that irrelevant realm as long as the Church can stay fenced behind it. R2K isn’t atheistic though it has spiritualized Christianity to the point that atheism must look awfully inviting to the serious minded person. Eschatologically speaking both miss the mark, though they miss the mark in different directions. Cultural Marxism is teleologically optimistic and humanistic Utopian while R2K is teleologically pessimistic and Christian Dystopian. However — and this is important — at the very moment when the Cultural Marxists arrive at their Utopian state the R2K Jesus returns in order to crush this present wicked age as successfully built by the Cultural Marxists. What was Utopian to the Cultural Marxists was Dystopian to the R2K and Jesus breaks in to bring all things to an end.

One can see that there are similarities and differences but where these similarities converge there is a great opportunity for each to work alongside the other in order to achieve their parallel goals.

Twin Spin … Dr. Van Til vs. The R2K Lads

“If then Christianity as interpreted in the Reformed creeds, as championed by Kuyper, Bavinck, Hodge, Warfield, and Machen, is to be presented to men today, ministers must learn to understand the riches of their own position. Christianity …is the sine qua non of the intelligibility of anything. Why am I so much interested in science? It is a) because with Kuyper I believe that God requires of us that we claim every realm of being for Him, and b) because with Kuyper I believe that unless we press the crown rights of our King in every realm, we shall not long retain them in any realm.”

Cornelius Van Til, “The Defense of the Faith”, pg. 276

1.) Van Til was not R2K and the R2K lads need to give up claiming Van Til.

A.) Van Til says that, “Christianity is the sine qua non of the intelligibility of anything.” R2K says, “No, that is inaccurate. What is the sine qua non of the intelligibility in the common realm is not Christianity but Natural Law.”

B.) Van Til, with Kuyper believed that every realm — including the common realm — must be claimed for God. R2K says to Van Til, “No, ‘Kees,’ don’t you understand that the common realm can’t be captured for God since the common realm is a realm of creation and not redemption?”

C.) Van Til understood that the realms were integrated to some degree so that if the R2K common realm caught a cold the result would be that the R2K spiritual realm would sneeze. R2K would say to Van Til, “No, Kees you don’t realize that the common realm and the spiritual realm are compartmentalized from one another so much so that Scripture is not the moral standard for the common kingdom. The common realm and the spiritual realm are sealed tight from one another Kees.”

“Moreover, in paradise, supernatural revelation, that is, thought-communication on the part of God, accompanied God’s revelation in the created universe. Natural revelation therefore required supernatural revelation as its supplement even apart from the fact of sin. Even in paradise Adam had to regard all the facts of his natural environment in the light of the goal that God set for man in his supernatural revelation.”

Cornelius Van Til, “The Defense of the Faith”, pg. 205

If Van Til is correct here then Natural Law, as a means by which social order can be organized, is not possible. Natural revelation (of which Natural law is a subset) needs supernatural revelation in order to make sense. To state it differently, for natural revelation to gain traction it must presuppose special revelation. Yet, that is precisely what R2K denies. R2K affirms that Natural law can be understood quite fine apart from and without special revelation and insists that a cohesive God honoring social order can be built on Natural law.

Gnostikoi’s Strangeness

Over at Gnostikoi’s life,

http://oldlife.org/2012/05/looks-like-peter-and-paul-were-radical-2kers/#comments

Gnostikos gives a flurry of Scriptures and then concludes with this,

The more some try to read their political opposition into Scripture, the more they resemble political Islam.

Now, the political opposition that Gnostikos Darryl says I read into Scripture was merely the idea that God has ordained Spheres of sovereignty in the Temporal realm (Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Family) and over those spheres He has set Covenant Heads (Elders (I Peter 5:1-4) , Magistrates (Romans 13:1-7), Fathers (Ephesians 5, 6) to rule as His representatives in their ordained spheres. Then I merely mentioned that Marxism is a Sphere sovereignty sucking philosophy that seeks to overturn God’s ordained spheres.

Then I ended with this paragraph that might have hurt Darryl’s feelings,

All of this explains why radical two kingdom theology is such a poison pill for the church because radical two kingdom theology insists that the Church as the Church has no role in declaiming against the Marxist state’s attempt to seize all temporal sovereignty. R2K “theology” would stand silent as the state seeks to absorb all temporal sovereignty so that it becomes the idol state that has raised itself up against the almighty God. In R2K “theology” the only time the Church can protest this seizure of sovereignty is when the state seeks to dictate to the Church about its formal worship patterns. But if the Church is only concerned about its formal worship patterns then why would the state ever have any reason to want to absorb a sovereignty that it views as irrelevant? In point of fact if the R2K church is telling its people that they must obey the state, the state may very well view the R2K church as already effectively one of its agents.

1.) Note the political opposition that Gnostikos Darryl is reading into my quote is the opposition of the Church to declaim against Marxism as a concrete plausibility structure that is seeking to gain all temporal sovereignty for itself so that it can be a god above God. Scripture informs me, as a Pastor, I am to have, “No Other Gods before me,” and so as a Pastor, when the State seeks the kind of Sovereignty that would ensconce it as God, I am compelled by Scripture and conscience to declaim against the God-State. There is no reading into Scripture here.

2.) Note that the Scripture that Gnostikos Darryl quotes in his blog entry does not trump Peter’s, “We must obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29). And the same Paul that wrote some of those Scripture’s that Gnostikos Darryl can refer to is the same Paul who disobeyed a direct order from the Magistrate in Acts 16,

35 Now when day came, the chief magistrates sent their policemen, saying, “Release those men.” 36 And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The chief magistrates have sent to release you. Therefore come out now and go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us in public without trial, men who are Romans, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they sending us away secretly? No indeed! But let them come themselves and bring us out.”

Here you have the same Paul who wrote I Timothy 2:1-4, and Romans 13, disobeying a direct order from a Civil Magistrate. If St. Paul could defy a Magistrate’s orders for being released — a defiance which was for far more picayune reasons then the kind of defiance I’ve said is warranted as against a Magistrate for flagrant and repeated disobedience to God’s revelation — then how much more is Christ centered defiance warranted when a Magistrate is seeking to suck up all the temporal sovereignty available so they might seek to place themselves in the position of God to God’s people?

3.) Gnostikos Darryl doesn’t believe that there is no time in which a Christian can say “no” to a Magistrate. He believes saying, “no” to a Magistrate is warranted when the Magistrate gets in the way of formalized worship. As such Darryl and I agree that the Magistrate’s authority isn’t absolute. Our only difference is where to draw the line. Darryl draws the line at the point where the Magistrate gets in the way of formalized Church worship whereas I would say lines might well be drawn, as well in matters like,

A.) The Magistrate demanding that I must turn my children over to the pagan state schools
B.) The Magistrate condoning and supporting the wide scale murder of the unborn
C.) The Magistrate condoning and promoting sexual perversion
D.) The Magistrate condoning and legislating oppressively against private property
E.) The Magistrate requiring me to be involved in a office-work process role of a final solution for Radical Two Kingdom officialdom.

In each of those I can envision the necessity of the Church to say, “We must obey God rather than man.” Darryl however, says the Church should be silent on these matters and so by its silence support the agenda of the tyrant.