Apologetics – Page 22

“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.

Rev. Larry Ball … Of Squirt Guns and Five Alarm Fires

Why Are Wilson’s Children Warriors?

In the above article Rev. Larry Ball gives analysis on the Moscow mood and in the doing of so he makes some observations about some current men on the scene. I think he views most of those he mentions by name as wearing different shades of white hats. I, on the other hand, only see different shades of black and gray.

I make my case below.

I think this article is disastrous. Rev. Larry Ball does not yet understand where the dividing line is. All those he salutes in the 6th and 7th paragraphs are part of the problem, and really are enemies to a full throated Biblical Christianity. They all treat the wound too lightly and each at different points compromise in their own way.

Now, it may be true that here or there they get a matter right and I suppose if one isolates that one or two issues they have right and stick with that on those issues one will be fine. However, if one is talking about a comprehensive and organic Biblical Christianity that is equipped to stem the tide, never mind roll it back, there is not a one of them, in Ball’s list, taken as a whole, that is the answer to our current malaise.

What matters it if you get this or that issue right when you end up giving back what you gained previously by being desperately in error on some other central issue?

Van Til used to use a metaphor about having all the different magnitude of the weaponry of the military pointed in the same direction in order to have maximum effect. These men Ball lists have some of the apologetic weaponry pointed in the right direction but elsewhere in their apologetic they are shooting at those who should be their friends.

Ball is correct that the Reformed faith needs to be providing answers on these cultural issues. Some clearly are not providing them in the least. Others are like Van Til’s “Mr. Gray” (See his article, “Mr. Black, Mr. Gray, and Mr. White”). What we need is more Mr. Whites when it comes to this battle. Ball’s list does not give us any Mr. Whites — nobody who is thinking comprehensively about the issues at had. There are no Rushdoony’s in Ball’s list.

One wonders if there are no Rushdoony’s on Ball’s list, because to be a modern Rushdoony is the kiss of death. Even when RJR was alive the mainstream “Conservative” Reformed establishment wanted very little to do with the man. How much less so must that be now, nearly 23 years after RJR’s call to glory?

Now, I am not idolizing RJR here. No, not at all. I think he was wrong on his dismissal of conspiracy theory. I think his constant optimistic prattling about victory just a few years away on this or that issue (homeschooling, minority revivals,) did not, in the end serve him well. Save for Otto Scott I do not think he surrounded himself with top shelf Lieutenants. However, those errors did not stop him from giving a comprehensive organic answer that, if he had been paid attention to and given heed, would have meant that we would not now be where we currently are in both our church moment and our cultural moment.

S, I don’t expect anybody to get it right always all the time. I don’t expect that. Shoot, I’ve even been known to get important matters wrong. (Hard to believe isn’t it?) However, some of the errors of those who are considered “the good guys” by Ball (Sandlin, Boot, Durbin, to name just a few) just are out to lunch on some pretty serious matters.

I know I am the playing the role of the canary in the mine shaft but I’m telling you if we don’t get the whole issue of race/ethnicity/WOKE correct as our Christian Fathers had it correct (See Achord & Dow’s book, “Who Is My Neighbor”) then being right everyplace is not going to matter. Ethno-Nationalism (Kinism) is the issue of our times. It is to us what Justification was for Luther and Calvin. It is to us what the eternality of Christ was for Athanasius. If all our ships do not sail in the same direction on this one issue we will all be blown out of the water by our enemies even if we are all sailing in the same direction on every other cultural issue.

The problem with the Moscow mood is not what Ball says is the problem. The problem with the Moscow mood is that it’s mood is only a grifter’s affectation. The real mood we need can be located in the troops with Martel @ Tours, or in the Polish Winged Hussar calvary with Sobieski @ Vienna, or in those sailors with Don Juan @ Lepanto, or in those Crusaders with Godfrey of Boullion during the 1st crusade. When we find clergy in the Church with that mood then phone me.

I applaud Rev. Larry Ball for attacking R2K but our attack needs to be broader. Much much broader. Ball treats the wound of God’s people too lightly. He has not understood how badly we are wounded right now.

He has brought a squirt gun to a five alarm fire.

Oh… and has anybody yet refuted all those quotes in the Achord & Dow book?

Andy Sandlin says; “Christianity Erases Racial Identity.” Don’t be like Andy

“Racial identity is incompatible w/ the Christian Gospel. The Gospel was created partly to overcome racial identity. The Gospel was created to forge religious identity.”

Andy Sandlin

1.) Sentence #1 explains thus why Jesus had to be descended from David.

2.) Is Jesus, who is now at the Right hand of the Father, no longer to be referred to as “The Lion of the Tribe of JUDAH?”

3.) The Gospel was created in order so that the Ethiopian could no longer be used hypothetically as one who could not change his skin?

4.) How can it possibly be the case that given this view that Christianity is not pure on Gnosticism? Seems the Manicheans were correct after all.

5.) More of the modern Gospel that teaches that grace destroys nature. Once you love yourself some Jeebus you no longer are “Red or Yellow, Black or White, because after all you’re all the same in God’s sight.”

6.) Since the Gospel was forged to create religious identity clearly we can also do away with biological gender identity since it must be the case that if the Gospel was created to overcome racial identity it must also be the case whereupon the Gospel was created to over come gender identity.

Honestly, I am left absolutely gob-smacked that this man could have his own wife listening to him, never mind having scads of people hang on his every word.

And he, as well as those who share this opinion, are not that uncommon among those reputed to be pillars in the Church.

Commenting on DeYoung’s Solo Foodfight Against Pope Doug

Over here;

https://clearlyreformed.org/on-culture-war-doug-wilson-and-the-moscow-mood/?fbclid=IwAR1-mGWEoz3uofTIeXG1iAu8Xqw_z1GAHxQqq_8FvZ7Rr_LYvbcWFu96t14

The Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung published one heck of a strange column, the explanation of which can only be that Doug Wilson is increasingly being seen as a threat to established Presbyterianism. I offer that because the minute this piece by DeYoung was hot off the press our favorite academic Presbyterian dunce (Dr. R. Scott Clark) immediately linked it and praised it to the hilt. Of course, Scott also, back in the day, similarly praised to the hilt Tullian Tchividjian. All that to say that Scott’s track record for picking winners isn’t exactly praiseworthy.

Now those who know me and/or follow Iron Ink know that I am no friend to Pope Doug. So, this ends up being a case of “a pox upon both your houses.” Still, the criticisms of DeYoung are so cringe worthy that something has to be said. I guess that in this column I am pulling a Winston Churchill who once said that “if Hitler ever attacked Hell, he put in a good word for the Devil.”

I honestly don’t understand what DeYoung is seeking to accomplish with this piece. Nobody who reads this who already hates Wilson needs to read it, and those who love Wilson will only love him more as a result of the whining that Kevin DeYoung does here.

Below find some quotes from DeYoung followed by some of my observations.

“The most important fight is the fight for faith, not the fight for Christendom. The Christian life must be shaped by the theology of the cross, however much we might prefer an ever-present theology of glory. ”

Kevin DeYoung

1.) This is straight up R2K speak.

2.) So we want to fight for a faith that is dis-attached from the Christendom that is its natural impulse and consequence? This is like saying we want to fight for sex in marriage, not fight for pregnancy in marriage.

3.) This reference to a “theology of the Cross,” is what you hear from the Protestant Clergy who have forgotten that following the Cross was the Resurrection and the Ascension and the ruling at the right hand of the father. These chaps like DeYoung love them the crucifix. One wonders if, in their world, Jesus ever gets off that cross to ascend to the throne at the Right hand of the Father?

“We could do with fewer witticisms front and center, and more conspicuous delighting in the sweetness of fellowship with Christ and exulting in the love of God our Savior.”

Kevin DeYoung

This used to be called Pietism. Now we call it “Karen-ism.” (And no that isn’t a diss at white women alone. For Pete’s sake Karen’s come in all colors, shapes, and sizes.) It is sentimental hooey… God is my girlfriend stuff. It is not the way soldiers love their great Captains. It’s the way that women think about their beaus.

“I’m all for cultural engagement, even for some culture warring rightly understood.”

Kevin DeYoung

The only culture warring that DeYoung is interested in is culture warring against those who culture war.

Clergy like DeYoung and Wilson remind me why I hate admitting to being clergy. Who wants to be associated with these nekulturny? It would be like a Bagel admitting, while visiting the ghettos, that he worked for the Reich ministry of Propaganda as Goebbels’s chief Lieutenant.

Watching DeYoung assail Wilson is like back when you were in High School and you would occasionally see the Special Ed. kid get in a fight in the hallway. You knew he meant to really bring it, but you also knew that he was at a disadvantage from jump.

“For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible w/ Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, & ultimately inconsistent w/ stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project”

Kevin DeYoung

Snort …. if DeYoung only knew that Moscow was merely the blunt side of the sword. The side we use when we want to slice bread or spank the toddlers.

“The naughty part is that Wilson uses the words “wussy” and “wuss”—adolescent slang for someone weak and effeminate. These are words most Christian parents don’t allow their kids to use, since the terms probably originated as a combination of “wimp” and another word I won’t mention.”

Kevin DeYoung

Article Criticizing Pope Doug

LOL… of all the things that Pope Doug could be justly criticized for, DeYoung chose to go after Wilson for saying “wuss” and “wussy?” I mean DeYoung could have gone after Doug’s constant trimming and equivocating, or he could have slapped Wilson upside the head for his constant usage of false dichotomy, or he could have questioned Wilson’s thinking that marriage can cure pedophilia. There are tons of things that DeYoung could have gone after Wilson for but what we get is that Kevin can’t abide Dougie’s use of a marginally and barely naughty word? It’s like a child seeing little Johnny flash someone on the playground but tattling to the teacher that Johnny cut in line.

This is why many men no longer take conservative Presbyterian clergy seriously. Personally, I never let my son go outdoors to play if he DIDN’T promise to use words like that when necessary. Personally, I never knew any Christian parents who didn’t allow their sons to use “language like that,” and if I did know any Christian parents like that, they sure didn’t want to know me.

Yeah… it’s true… Kevin DeYoung is a WUSSY.

Rev. Dr. Kevin DeYoung explains perfectly that old French proverb;

There are three sexes,

1.) Male
2.) Female
3.) Clergy

At the end of the day my complaint about Wilson is he is not enough of the things that DeYoung accuses him off. I think that Wilson is not really serious and if he is serious he has seriously underestimated what it will take to restore Christian Western civilization. In other words, Wilson takes half measures. Wilson sustained this accusation when in replying to an accusation against him that he was trying to be Rushdoony 2.0 he quipped, “And here I was trying to merely be Rushdoony 0.5.” The fact that Doug is trying to cut the potency of Rushdoony in half communicates that Doug is moving away from Rushdoony to what Doug views is a safer place. That reality shows in many of Doug’s position, from his reluctance to advocate for the death penalty for sodomites, to his reluctance to insist that sabbath laws should be implemented across the whole social order Doug wants to turn back the hands of time to when we had a peaceable classically liberal social order. However we have, in America, long passed that exit and we won’t be going back to any classical liberal social order since such a social order given our demographic composition today will not allow for the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the unique King of the social order. Our classical liberal social order could work for as long as it did because of two reasons,

1.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly White. The European cousins had made flight to America and intermarried and yet remained 87% white.

2.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly Christian of one flavor or another. Those who weren’t Christian had to conform. (Think US vs. Reynolds where the Mormons were told polygamy would not be allowed.)

A classically liberal social order can not work where there no longer exists a shared demographic and a shared religion wherein harmony of interest can be shared among the populace.

Neither Wilson nor DeYoung are going to help us return to a social order that refuses classical liberalism.