Category: Apologetics

McAtee Contra Dr. W. Robert Godfrey On Egalitarianism

America Christianity has had a long run of strength in our culture…. We were traveling and I found a book in a book store titled “The End of White Christian America,” and it’s not as analytical as I had hoped it would be but it is full of statistics in an interesting way showing how America is changing and the role of Christian values in America is changing dramatically and I thought; ‘How do we react to that? How do we feel about that?’ Well, some American Christians (and of course there ought to be an end to white America. America ought to be a multiracial country where everyone is equal) But how do we feel as Christians that it ought to be the end of a Christian America? And you know I think there are two basic reactions to that. One reaction that we see too often is a angry reaction. ‘I’m mad that we’re losing our prerogatives. I’m mad that we’re losing our influence.’ I’m mad that these people have changed my country.’

Now there is some legitimacy to anger in politics but fundamentally Christians aren’t called to be angry, and I think that we as Christians need to say at this moment, ‘Alright, if we’re going to be weaker then let’s pray to the Lord that that will actually be an occasion for us to be strong and lets act in love.”

Dr. W. Robert Godfrey
Westminster Seminary California
President Emeritus
Ligonier Ministries Teaching fellow
Samson Series, Lecture 10, 11

I don’t know what year this was given but that hardly matters.

1.) Note the almost casual way in which the most offending part is given. It is said as if “well, it is obvious that there ought to be an end to America as a white nation and of course America ought to be multiracial where everyone is equal.” It is said as if multiculturalism and egalitarianism are the most obvious truths in the world. It almost is so obvious that it hardly even needs to be noted.

2.) Look again at the two “ought” statements. By what moral constraint and standard are these ought statements leveraged? Who says; “there ought to be an end to white America? America ought to be a multiracial country where everyone is equal?” If the egalitarianism of Cultural Marxism is the moral standard then we understand where all this “oughtness” is coming from as emanating from Dr. Godfrey. However, where do we find in Scripture the idea that nations ought to be egalitarian?

3.) And what of this idea of “equal” that Dr. Godfrey invokes? He even says everyone should be equal. As children are part of everyone should it be the case that children are equal to parents? In a Biblical worldview are men and women equal? Whence this idea that all peoples, regardless or their race or gender are equal? Yes, we agree that all men are equally responsible to God’s law as in their station and calling. Yes, we agree that all men outside of Christ are equally subject to God’s wrath (though they are not even all equally fallen as the depths of some people’s fallenness is more depraved than others depths of fallenness). Equality is a mathematical term. Two 2 x 4’s are equal. Two quarts are equal. However as people are not mathematical equations two people are never ever equal. This statement of Godfrey’s is horrid and is the product not of Christianity but of Marxism.

4.) Scripture does at times call for anger. Scripture teaches “Be angry, and sin not (Psalm 4:4, Ephesians 4:26). Scripture also counsels repeatedly that we should be slow to anger. However, there comes a time when a lack of anger is not Christ honoring. Christians ought to be angry when God’s glory is diminished or cast away. That our homeland was founded by Christian god-fearing men who had a vision of Christ’s dominion in the new world that has since been cast aside for the sake of tolerating sin and making room for the alien, stranger and foreigner who seized it from citizens who were taught the importance of a ‘anti-christ’ tolerance should make us angry. In light of that reality, for Dr. Godfrey to say “well Christians shouldn’t be angry” is enough to make someone properly angry.

4.) Christians ought to be mad that Christianity is losing (has lost) its prerogatives and influence. Why would any Christian be  neutral or happy  that the prerogatives and influence of other alien anti-Christ religions have flourished above the Christ honoring prerogatives and influence of Christ? If Christians are to have “no other God’s before God,” then should they not be saddened, disappointed and, yes, even angry, that other gods are now before God in the public square?

5.) Note in all this Dr. Godfrey seems to see no correlation between the decline of Christianity in America and the decline of White America.

6.) That last sentence above from Dr. Godfrey is a whole semester of Jesus Juking in just one sentence.

7.) Yes, of course, we are to act in love. Just as I’m sure Samson was acting in love when he pushed out the pillars on the Philistines in his final loving act and just as David was acting in love when he loaded up that slingshot and just as Jesus was acting in love when He called the Pharisees “white washed tombs full of dead men’s bones,” and just as Elijah was acting in love when he partied with the prophets of Baal in the Kishon valley and just as Paul was acting in love when he told the Judaizers that he wished that they would go all the way and emasculate themselves.

8.) Paul’s discovery that “when I am weak, then I am strong,” was not an injunction to search out weakness and embrace it. It was an observation that when visited with weakness by God’s providence we can discover grace that works to make us strong.

9.) All that Dr. Godfrey says above is consistent with the R2K that the Seminary he was President of has pushed for decades now.

The Common Ground Between R2K & Doctrinaire Communism

“The (Russian) Orthodox Church already had martyrs to Communism: but Patriarch Tikhon (1865 – 1925), for all his earlier courage, was not to be among them. In June, the Communists broke him. He signed a statement declaring that his treatment had been justified because of his anti-Soviet attitudes, and that he had not suffered in confinement. He made this formal avowal of surrender: ‘I have completely adopted the Soviet platform, and consider that the Church must be non-political.’

But the blood of Orthodox Archbishop Benjamin and Catholic Msgr. Budkiewicz cried out from the ground against that.”

Warren H. Carroll
The Rise & Fall of Communist Revolutions – p. 164

What is interesting in this quote is that the Russian Communists, after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 were insisting that the Churches in Russia must be, by way of doctrinal commitment, be non-political — that is to say they must not be involved in speaking to state policy.

In turn, the interest in that is found in the fact that such a Communist policy is the same policy that the R2K chaps from Escondido (Westminster West) and elsewhere in the Reformed denominational world insist must be the policy of the Reformed church. So, both the Communists and the Radical Two Kingdom “theologians” like David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, Michael Horton, J. V. Fesko, D. G. Hart, Chris Gordon, T. David Gordon, Kevin DeYoung, ad infinitum, each agree that the Church must be non-political. (Never mind the consideration that if the church is non-political it is at that point following a extraordinarily political path.)

The Communists tortured Patriarch Tikhon in order to get his mind right on the subject of the “non-political nature of the church” and R2K does all it can to close the door against those who defy their Communist skubala that insists that the Church is necessarily obligated to be “non-political.”

Ecclesiastical Condemnation On The Sin of Noticing

Something interesting happened this past season of Reformed denominational confabs. The something interesting is the ruling by the RPCNA, the ARP, and the PCA, together agreeing to issue forth an anathema against the sin of noticing. Each of them put their stamp approval of the following statement;

That the 221st General Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church do on this solemn day condemn without distinction any theological or political teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristics and does on this solemn evening call to repentance any who would promote or associate themselves with such teaching, either by commission or omission.

Leave it to the Reformed to try and sweep back the incoming tidal wave of racial realism with a document inspired by the Cultural Marxism of the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. This riff of midwittery above was put forth by one Rev. Benjamin Glaser though there is rumor that the palsied hand of Rev. Andy Webb was involved as well. Any party to the creation of this document as well as any party who voted for this to be accepted deserves to have a pointy dunce hat put on them and be consigned to some ecclesiastical corner to mull over the error of their ways.

Below I provide a brief analysis of this Tom Foolery;

1.) What is not condemned here is any sociological or cultural anthropological teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity. Apparently, if one casts their teaching in sociological or cultural anthropological terms one is safe from this foolhardy Presbyterian condemnation.

2.) Here we find a condemnation approved by a Church body and yet this condemnation is not based upon any notification of which sin has been committed so has to have this condemnation uttered. Presumably, this condemnation is due to the fact that someone somewhere has violated at least one of the ten commandments. Yet, nowhere above to we find the sin committed that has earned this condemnation.

3.) In point of fact what this “church” condemnation abominates is the sin of noticing. In point of fact it might be the highest point yet for inveighing against the sin of noticing ever issued by a church body.

4.) One thing we can be thankful for with this Church condemnation is the fact that it is apparently the case now that race and ethnicity are being acknowledged as real realities and not merely social constructs. I mean this is an improvement on what we have previously gotten from Doug Wilson and Voddie Baucham on the issue of race. Wilson wants to insist that race is a social construct and Voddie wants to say that race is merely about melanin levels. At least the three NAPARC denominations are granting that race and ethnicity are real.

5.) If there can be no superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristic then by necessity there can be no inferiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristic. This means that when it comes to immutable human characteristics these conservative denominations are 100% egalitarian.  It is not possible, per these esteemed clergy, that God has created the different races / ethnicities of men to be differentiated in their varying expressions of humanity.

6.) What would happen if someone arose within these NAPARC denominations insisted that while average Australian Aboriginal  intelligence is inferior when compared to average East Asian intelligence but insisted this while admitting all this may be mutable over enough time? Would anyone in the NAPARC denominations even care? Would they care if the same person said at the same time that the average white European intelligence is, on average, two standard deviation points higher than sub-Saharan Blacks in the US as long as the person saying this conceded that it might not be immutable and that 1000 years later this might not be true? Would such a person who believed this not be condemned by these ultracrepidarian Presbyterians?

7.) If these chaps are serious about condemning someone who holds these views how is it, if they can’t substantiate from Scripture why it is necessary to agree with them, that they have not added to what it means to obey the Gospel? How have they not added to the Gospel and in so doing anathematized themselves by doing so?

8.) Think about the numerous church fathers from church history these clowns have condemned. Off the top of my head these clowns have condemned Calvin, Kuyper, Hodge, Dabney, Schaff, Solzhenitsyn, Francis Nigel Lee, John Edwards Richards, etc. It really is monstrous when one realizes the level of avarice to the end of popularity involved in this pronouncement.

9.) This whole thing is perfectly ended with the stated need for repentance on the part of anybody who would associate with the teaching – either by omission or commission – that is condemned. Presumably, this would mean that if someone attends a church who themselves are unsure on the ideas condemned and found themselves friends or associates of someone who does believe these condemned ideas said person would have to repent just for associating with these sinners.

10.) This official condemnation also gives tyrant Pastors the ability to just remove membership of a member of their church if that member was to say, for example, something like, “Well, I think that Michael Hunter has some interesting points to consider in his article on Natural vs. non-Natural communities.” Such a person would be required to repent and if they refused, per this anathema, they would have to be cast out of the body should these nekulturny clergy be consistent with their words.

Exposing the R2K Agenda of Dr. Kevin De Young’s In His Interpretation of the WCF

The duties required in the Second Commandment are…the disapproving, detesting, opposing, all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry.

Westminster Larger Catechism 108

It seems pretty clear from the above that those clergy who subscribe to the WCF, are required to be adamantly opposed to a “principled pluralism” that allows for all the gods to be in the public square and yet Rev. Kevin DeYoung can write;

‘”Gone from WCF 23:3 in the American revision are any references to the civil magistrate’s role in suppressing heresies and blasphemies, in reforming the church, in maintaining a church establishment, and in calling and providing for synods…. In its place, the American revision lists four basic functions for the civil magistrate relative to the church…(4) protect all people so no one is injured or maligned based on his or her religion or lack of religion.”

With this quote above DeYoung puts the WCF in contradiction to itself. De Young would interpret WCF 23:3 as in direct contradiction to WLC 108, and while not trying to be too persnickety, Dr. Rev. De Young also, via his interpretation of the American revised WCF 23:3 put the Westminster Confession in contradiction with itself in WCF 19:4;

To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

WCF 19.4

19:4 teaches that a general equity relating to the judicial laws remain and further teaches that Christian Magistrates are required (obliged) to enforce that general equity where it remains. R2K chaps like Kevin De Young don’t like that idea because it doesn’t fit with their pursuit of a body politic devoted to principled pluralism (polytheism) with its god named “Natural Law,” as represented by the priesthood of government officials who interpret the will and Law-word of the god “Natural Law.”

That I am correct about this R2K Tom-foolery is seen in a quote from team R2K Reformed clergy member Dr. R. Scott Clark

“All orthodox Christians affirm that God’s moral law is enduring and binding to all people—to deny that is antinomianism. What is at stake here is the magistrate’s role in enforcing that moral law. The framers of the Statement (Statement On Christian Nationalism and the Gospel) have a plan, to which we have not yet arrived, but it entails some enforcement of the first table, and thus is theocratic.”

R. Scott Clark
Sub-Christian Nationalism? (Part 4)

Clark here is raising the horrors in the idea that the Magistrate might actually enforce the 1st table of God’s moral law. The danger he is bemoaning is “theocracy.” Like De Young, Dr. Clark desires a principled pluralism (polytheism) for the body politic with the god named “Natural Law” sitting as the God over all the gods. This god “Natural Law” has his word discovered and implemented by the governmental and bureaucratic priesthood who do his bidding.

DeYoung, along with Clark, and all the sycophants of R2K are insisting that the revised WCF now yields a required “principled pluralism,” and yet if DeYoung’s reading is correct on 23:3 then WLC 108 must be either revised or ignored. Note that WLC 108 explicitly says; “according to each one’s place and calling.” Clearly, Christian magistrates are being told that according to their place and calling they are to disapprove, detest, and oppose all false worship by removing said false worship and yet R2K in its pursuit of a non theocratic (principled pluralism / polytheism) theocracy (ruled by the god named Natural Law as interpreted by the governmental and bureaucratic priesthood) is denying their own confession with their errant theology.

DeYoung, wearing the uniform of team R2K is seeking to officially change the WCF from a Christian confession to a polytheistic confession. I say “officially,” because most Presbyterians already treat the WCF as a confession that requires the magistrate to rule over a polytheistic body-politic.

Refuting Rev. Chris Gordon’s “Babel Christianity”

This showed up in my newsfeed today as coming from Rev. Chris Gordon. I find it so interesting because both Gordon and his conversational partner here, Dr. Stephen Wolfe embrace Thomistic Natural Law thinking and yet they are vehemently disagreeing on the effects Christianity should have when landing among different social orders. So, they are both Thomists, philosophically, and yet they are at distinct loggerheads here.

A couple more things, first, Rev. Gordon teed this up by writing;

“Most important moment in my CN discussion with Stephen Wolfe:”

Chris clearly thinks he had Wolfe on the ropes here in this part of the interview.

Chis Gordon: Most people in CA are mocha, a mix of different ethnicities, do these people have a homeland?

Stephen Wolfe: California is unique though. If I stayed in CA…I don’t know. I bring this stuff up because of the importance of it…do you have a homeland? When I hear the stories of old CA…horseback riding in hills of Napa, 22 riffles…there is a sense of loss…

Bret Interjects:

1.) Gordon here clearly concedes that race and ethnicity are realities. After all, you can’t get to a “mocha, a mix of different ethnicities” without acknowledging that there were different ethnicities that existed that are now mixed.

2.) Second, I would say that if the decided majority of California was a thorough mix of different ethnicities than the homeland for those who were a thorough mix of different ethnicities would be California. It would be the homeland for those who had successfully embraced the Babel project that God judged in Genesis 11. California would be the homeland of the multicultural, multiracial and multi-faith people.

3.) Notice Wolfe’s response is to say that the previous people who occupied California have been run out by the new multicult crowd who now owns California, and that there is a certain sadness about that. I don’t know how anybody could disagree that it is sad when a particular people group is extinguished in favor of another people group whose bond is established by the fact that they have no bond except the bond of no bond.

Chris Gordon; The great message of the Christian gospel is I get to tell these people the church is the people and place, you have your soil, you have your place on the kingdom of God. Is this really the message that Christians want to give people, that previous generations lost all that was good with horses and guns, and that all of these many different “Johnny come lately” people groups really don’t belong with us? Is that our message, as Christians? Or might we seek to live in peace and harmony in this age together but with a distinctively Christian message that elevates us to a better salvific good, that God does give people a true homeland together in his kingdom, the church as Christ’s body, tearing down walls of hostility until we reach the heavenly land together of a multitude of nations worshipping God?

Bret responds,

1.) I’ll start at the end of Chris’ peroration here. One simply cannot have a multitude of nations worshipping God in the heavenly land if those nations have been bred out of existence, so that all that exists is a polyglot Babel stew in the land that is not yet heaven.

2.) As to this sentiment by Chris:

“The great message of the Christian gospel is I get to tell these people the church is the people and place, you have your soil, you have your place on the kingdom of God.”

All I can say is that it is contradictory to what John Calvin taught;

“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

John Calvin (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3)

The Reformed faith does welcome all to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” It does not say that there is no grace for the mulatto, mestizo, or whasian. All men everywhere are commanded to repent and if they do repent they are members of the Kingdom of God. However, just as repenting doesn’t change one’s gender, so repenting doesn’t change one’s ethnicity or race. Differences remain and those differences should be acknowledged.

I have a friend who Pastors a church in a large urban area. This church is comprised of different ethnicities and races and yet this Pastor friend tells me that he repeatedly tells his flock, from the pulpit, that even though they are all one in Christ that when it comes to marriage they should not intermarry because race/ethnicity matters.

3.) As to this portion by Rev. Gordon;

Is this really the message that Christians want to give people … that all of these many different “Johnny come lately” people groups really don’t belong with us? Is that our message, as Christians?

I would say the answer to that question is, “yes, that is the Christian message.” Just as the stranger and alien could never own land in ancient Israel because they were not Hebrews so Christianity teaches that it is not ideal to give your nation as a homeland to those who do not belong to your nation by way of descent.  Chris really need to consider reading James Hoffmeier’s book on immigration to understand that Christianity has never taught that “Johnny come lately” people groups belong with us. Until Chris does read Hoffmeier maybe he’ll consider this quote from Robert Putnam on the subject;

“Immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to `hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.”

Robert Putnam
E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century
The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture

I am of the conviction that what Gordon is giving us here is a Anabaptist paradigm. The Anabaptist were (and remain) the great levelers and what Rev. Gordon is calling for here is for leveling, whether he realizes it or not. Gordon is offering here a “All colors bleed into one” Christianity. He is, as Calvin describes above, a flighty and scatterbrained dreamer.” If Gordon gets his way the result will not be some Christian paradise composed of a Babel organized social order. If Gordon gets his way he will get a social order such as described by Putnam in the quote above.

Finally, note here that Gordon, who is R2K, is doing what R2K says should never be done by ministers. He is getting out of his lane talking about an issue that isn’t a “Gospel issue.” However, if Gordon wants to insist that this is a “Gospel issue” notice once again how liberal/progressive R2K is when it takes up social issues. R2K forever wants to present itself as uncommitted on political issues but here is Gordon being the raging liberal.