Apologetics – Page 36

“Is Thomistic Natural Law Legitimate? Part I”

Natural law as a concept in ethics goes back to ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotelian and Stoic. These philosophers believed that there are natural laws, moral principles that can be discovered in nature (particularly human nature) by reason and conscience. Of course, Aristotle and the Stoics were not concerned about the role of Scripture in ethics. But early, medieval, and Reformation Christians, seeking to integrate Greek philosophy with the Bible, asked how natural law and Scripture are related in our ethical decisions.

The problem with this was especially difficult in Protestant theology was two fold. First, Reformed theology argued both for man’s total depravity – meaning that man, being dead in his sins and trespasses, uses his reason with an agenda in order to escape the God ordained meaning of the universe. Second a problem for Natural law in Protestant theology, is found in the Reformers insistence on both the sufficiency of Scripture and the authority of Scripture for all of life.

The fact that Natural Law is not to be leaned upon is even seen in the Canon’s of Dort where we read;

“But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient … that man is incapable of using it rightly even in things natural and civil. Instead, even this light, man in various ways totally distorts, and holds it in unrighteousness, and in so doing becomes inexcusable before God.”

-Canons of Dordt III/IV.4

Dr. David VanDrunen who serves on the Faculty of a prestigious Reformed
Seminary defines natural law as

“the moral order inscribed in the world and especially in human nature, an order that is known to all people through their natural faculties (especially reason and/or conscience) even apart from supernatural divine revelation that binds morally the whole human race.”

Other definitions takes from assorted encyclopedias and and standard reference works define Natural law as,

“Human beings by their own reason, can gain knowledge of the ethically good without reference to God’s revelation.”

“… those absolute and universal value imperatives that are innate in the reason of every individual and necessarily come into the consciousness with the development of the mind … a means of emancipation from the supernatural ontology.”

Natural moral law – “the notion that there are true, universally binding moral principles knowable by all people and rooted in creation and the way things are made.”

“A body of law derived from nature and binding upon human society … discernable … by right reason… but not directly revealed.”

In all of these definitions the common theme is that fallen man, starting from himself, without presupposing the revelation of the God of the Bible, can interpret the world aright and come to proper conclusions regarding the order and meaning of reality. Man, by this theory, though he can not be saved by Natural law, he can, quite apart from the revelation of Scripture, order his life aright.

Of course we instantly begin to wonder how an attraction to and embrace of Natural Law escapes charges of some kind of humanism. We wonder this because the whole premise of Natural law is that man, starting from himself, quite apart from an acknowledged God or His revelation, can arrive at conclusions that are God honoring and respecting.

For the students in my Wednesday classes you need to know that this concept of Natural law as it came to be embraced by Christendom was largely the work of Thomas Aquinas. You see here some of what we spoke of last Wednesday and that is this idea of two ways to truth. One mediator of truth was Scripture but another mediator of truth was Natural law.

Today we are going to look at one of the texts in Scripture that Natural law theorists go to support their theories. I trust we will see that the text in Romans 2 in no way supports Natural Law thinking. However, before we start that I want us to see, in miniature that there are, from a Biblical understanding profound problems with Natural law.

1.) Though we concede that there is indeed General Revelation – the world is suffused with the reality of God and His truth – we do not concede that Natural law as a proscriptive model is a means of truth whereupon men can find meaning in the universe with the purpose of ordering their lives aright. We recall that Romans 1 clearly teaches that whatever Revelation God sends wicked men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Natural law is defeated by the truth that fallen men have an agenda to overthrow any agenda of God that is set forth in and by a putative Natural law.

Romans 1 says this explicitly’

26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

You see here that the natural use is exchanged for what is against nature. Natural law proclaims that men and women go together but fallen man, determined to overthrow God’s order, rebel against God’s natural law.

We see here that the problem with Natural law is not that God isn’t sending but the problem is that fallen man isn’t receiving. Fallen man is a radio receiver that is determined to pick up any channel except WGOD.

This brings us to our second overall problem with Natural law

2.) Natural Law doesn’t take seriously the reality of the fall.

The fall has vitiated all of man’s intellectual, emotional, volitional and psychological capacities. This is not to say that fallen man is as wicked as he could possibly be but it is to say that fallen man has determined that God shall not rule over him. If we take the consequences of the fall seriously than we would have to say that any project (like Natural Law) which posits that fallen man can order his life aright apart from Scripture is a project that does not take seriously the effect of the fall in terms of human depravity.

Scripture teaches in Romans 8:7 that the carnal mind is at enmity with God. Now how can a mind that is at enmity at God interpret God’s Natural Law aright? Scripture teaches that

“14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

How can someone who does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, because he is dead in his trespasses and sins, supposed to collect and know truth starting from himself in consideration of a God drenched universe that only has meaning in relationship to the meaning that God gives the universe?

The whole testimony of Scripture points to the reality that fallen man does not order his life aright via Natural Law. Here is one pertinent portion that reveals that,

17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, 18 having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; 19 who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

The Ephesians passage gives us a glimpse of what the fall looks like as it works itself out to its consistent end in the life of the pagan. No amount of Natural law can stem the unraveling of society and culture once the effects of the fall begin to follow their logical course.

3.) A third problem that Reformed / Biblical people have with Natural law is that it defies what the Scripture says about God’s Law.

Scripture teaches that not some amorphous, un-agreed upon Natural Law but Biblical law is the standard for men,

16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Do not miss “thoroughly equipped for every good work.” I take every good work to mean every good work and not every good work circumscribed to some area that is religious that is cordoned off from some area that is secular. I believe that Paul in this passage in Timothy is just agreeing with the sentiments in Isaiah on the necessity to attend to the “law and to the testimony,” which is the corpus of Scripture.

Now we have looked at these problems but you need to know that Natural law theory has been embraced through the centuries by many leading lights in the Reformed world. Indeed, a case can be made that there is a sense in which Christian civilization was built upon Natural law. I don’t want to spend a great deal of time here but it is my contention that Natural law theorizing only worked because such theorizing existed in the context of a people who were grounded in Christian presuppositions and reared and saturated in a Biblical mindset. Natural law theory can work in that kind of societal order because the preponderance of people, being Christian or influenced by Christian categories, are going to read Natural law as communicating back to them their pre-existent premises with which they are reading the Natural law.

However, Natural law cannot work in a post-Christian culture, characterized by poly-pluralism, poly-faithism, and multiculturalism as a means of stabilizing a social order. In point of fact in that kind of setting – the kind of setting we live in today – Natural Law can only create chaos as each grouping of people insist that Natural law sets forth whatever ethics or lack of ethics that their respective faith systems advocate. The Muslim insists that it is self-evident that Natural law teaches Sharia law. The pagan insists that it is self evident that Natural law teaches homosexuality. The Christian insists that it is self-evident that Natural law teaches a Christian law order. Let the conflict begin.

Now all of this is then complicated a thousand fold by the reality that there is no one agreed upon theory on what Natural Law is or how it is arrived at.

The respected Natural Law theorist, Dr. Howard Kainz, was honest enough to admit in his writing that when you examine the Natural law theories of …

“Aristotle, Plato, the Stoics, Aquinas, Surez, Hobbes, Locke, Grotius, Pufendorf, and Kant … there are major differences in the approaches and presuppositions and tenets, so that it would seem to be oversimplifying and misleading to talk about multiple applications of “the” natural law … One thinks of the various “natural law” movements taking place now … which have by no means tried to arrive at a consensus about what is meant by Natural law, or about which theory offers the best expression of Natural law.”

The German scholar Erik Wolf in 1955 counted over 120 conflicting definition of the words “nature” and “law.” A recent effort reached over 200 definitions before they stopped counting. One dictionary has 36 different definitions of the word “nature.” Is reason a part of nature or is nature a part of reason? Inquiring minds want to know. Is “nature” out there? up there? in there? in here? Natural law doesn’t seem to know.

It seems that Natural law does not even clearly reveal what Natural law itself is. If Natural law can not even clearly reveal what Natural law itself is then how can we expect Natural law to be a social order governing mechanism by which societies and cultures can be structured?

Now add to all this that Natural law has been invoked over the centuries to support everything from infanticide among the Romans to homosexuality among the Greeks to chattel man stealing slavery among the West and you begin to see that the house of Natural law is a old dilapidated thing that only the most desperate of people would like to inhabit.

And yet the Natural law project marches on and is experiencing a slight revival today in some obscure corners of the Reformed Church.

We believe that what Dr. Cornelius Van Til in a letter he penned to Francis Schaeffer regarding Natural Theology is equally true for Natural law,

“I think you will agree then, that no form of Natural Theology has ever spoken properly of the God who is there. None of the great Greek philosophers, like Plato, Aristotle and none of the great modern philosophers, like Descartes, Kant, or Kierkegaard and others, have ever spoken of the God who is there. The systems of thought these men represent a repression of the revelations of the God who is there. However, no man has, from a study and of the facts of nature by means of observation and ratiocination, ever come to the conclusion that he is a creature of God and that he is a sinner in the sight of God, who, unless he repents, abides under the wrath of God.”

And John Frame,

“So the Biblical view of the natural world is intensely personalistic. Natural events come from God, the personal Lord. He also employs angels and human beings to do His work in the world. But the idea that there is some impersonal mechanism called ‘nature’ or ‘natural law’ that governs the universe is absent from the Bible. So is the notion of an ultimate ‘randomness’ as postulated by some exponents of quantum mechanics.”

Is Thomistic Natural Law … Legitimate? Part II

Romans 2:14-16

14 for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, 15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) 16 in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.

This text is probably the main text that is seized upon by Natural Law theorists to justify the Natural law project. I hope to show in what follows that the text does not support the whole Natural Law project. The reason that I am pursuing this here is due to the fact that among some Reformed Churches, Jesuit trained scholars are seeking to revive the Natural Law tradition within the Reformed Church. One would have thought that given the thorough thrashing that the presuppositionalists in the 20th century gave to Natural theology and by extension Natural Law that this would be a battle that would not need to be fought again but alas memories are even shorter than lifespans.

From the passage above the Natural Law theorist posit three truths about the text that just are not so.

1.) Natural Law theorists are convinced that the text is a universal given for all men

2.) The word Law in vs. 15 is a reference to Natural Law or Laws found in nature.

3.) The Natural Law(s) are written in the hearts of all men

The background of this passage finds the Apostle making the case that fallen men will not be able to use the excuse of a lack of revelation for their insistence that they do not know God. This is due to the reason that the Gentiles have suppressed the truth of God’s revelation in unrighteousness and chose to worship the creation over the Creator.

The basis of God’s condemnation of the wicked is that they are ungodly and unrighteous, having inherited original sin and they are condemned having been imputed with the sin of Adam. The refusal to receive the message of General Revelation which teaches that there is a God and that man is condemned only ratifies the condemnation that fallen man is born under and with.

Some of these that come under God’s condemnation are those who have never heard of God’s Law (Torah). Yet, even these are condemned for;

all who have sinned without the Torah will also perish without the Torah; and all who who have sinned under the Torah will be judged by the Torah. (Romans 2:12)

It is important to point out here that the “Torah” (Law) mentioned here is not reducible to the Decalogue. The Torah includes all of the Law in all of its detail that God gave to Israel. John Murray could comment on this text by offering,

“The law referred to is definite and can be none other than the law of God specified in the preceding verses as the laws which the Gentiles do not have, the law the Jews did have and under which they were, the law by which men will be condemned in the day of judgment.”

This is important to note because our Natural Law friends want to reduce the Law in Romans 2 to the Decalogue and they want to contend that the Gentiles did have the Law being referred to here if only as given by a different delivery system (Natural Law). The Law that the Apostle refers to here is a law that governed how one’s hair was cut, how one’s crops were planted, how sin was to be punished, etc. It was the whole Torah system. To assume that the law that is referred to in Romans 2 is only the Ten Commandments is to import something to the text that is not there. Clearly it is easier to make a case that Natural Law communicates that Murder is wrong. It is more difficult to contend that Natural Law teaches that if an animal gores and kills somebody it must be stoned. By reducing what the Torah is in Romans 2 the Natural Law aficionado makes it easier to successfully make his case.

Paul in Romans 2:14 emphatically states that some Gentiles do not have the Torah to guide them. It is important that we realize that there is no definite article in the Greek before the word “Gentiles.” This is significant because the Natural Law guys who learned from their Jesuit mentors assume, contrary to the text, that all Gentiles do have the Torah but from a different source – to wit, from Nature as read by autonomous reason.

You can imagine a bit of a conversation that might develop between a Roman Catholic Thomistic defender of Natural Law and the Presuppositionalist who reads the Scripture,

Presuppositionalist: A “Gentile” by definition is someone who does not have the Torah to guide him in all of life.

Thomist: No! The Gentiles do have Torah. They just get it from Nature, not Revelation.

Presuppositionalist: NO! Paul states twice in Romans 2:14 that Gentiles do not have the Torah. He is not saying that they have a Torah-without-God through a Nature-without-God. In Romans 2:12, Paul states that those who sin without Torah will perish without Torah. If they have the Torah, even through a Nature-without-God how can he say that Gentiles sin and perish without it?

The Apostle is stating that the “conscience” in the Gentile heathen takes the place of the Torah by sitting in judgment of what He thinks and says and does. This is key for it is this conscience that is the “work of the law written on the heart.” The work of the law is to adjudicate between right and wrong. It is the heathen Gentiles conscience that is doing that work. It is thus not the Law (Torah) that is written on the Gentile heart but the work of the Law as accomplished by the conscience that is written on the Gentile’s heart. Instead of the Torah the pagan has conscience. Meyer points out,

“their moral nature, with its voice of conscience commanding and forbidding, supplies to their own Ego the place the revealed law possessed by the Jews.”

Robert Haldane chimes in,

“We have here a distinction between the law itself, and the work of the law. the work of the law is the thing that that the law doeth, – that is, what it teaches about actions, as good or bad. This work, or business, or office of the law, is to teach what is right or wrong.”

A proper understanding of Romans 2:14-16 requires us to distinguish between what the text says (the work of the law written on their hearts) and what is passed off as the text saying (the law written on their hearts).

This error of rearranging the text is seen by reputed scholars like David VanDrunen

“God has inscribed the natural law on the hearts of every person (Romans 2:14-15), and all people know the basic requirements of God’s law, even if they suppress that knowledge (Rom. 1:19, 21, 32).”

Michael Horton has likewise made this common error,

“Gentiles have the moral law indelibly written on their conscience (Rom. 2:15). Not only do they know the second table (duties to neighbors); they know the first table as well (duties to God).”

These incidents could be many times repeated by many Thomistic authors and in this habit we see theologians not only deleting the words “the work of” but adding the words “on the hearts of all men.”

The problem here is that Paul did not say that, “the law was written on the hearts of all men.” Indeed, given the context of Romans 2 Paul most assuredly does not have in view all men but only those Gentile pagans who do not have the written Torah. If our Natural law lovers were consistent with their misreading of the text they would have to admit that Jews do not have Natural Law because they have Torah.

Lenski explains,

“Jews cannot be included, for they are under the Mosaic code. The Greeks are also excluded … because the Greek is a pagan he is not necessarily included … Also those who sin and perish ‘without any law’ (vs. 12) are excluded… This interpretation will not be accepted by those who think that all Gentiles are here referred to. But Paul had looked around in this wicked world a bit. It still contains men who have no conscience at all, who in no way respond even to an inner law … Yes, ethne (Greek for Gentile) without the article is correct.”

So clearly the interpretation of Natural Law advocates is inaccurate here. The passage does not support the interpolation that “the law is written on the hearts of all men.” The Holy Spirit is not speaking universally of all mankind. Natural law theorizing fails on this account.

Now add to this that the word “Gentiles” does not have the definite article in Romans 2:14 because not only is Paul not making a universal statement about all mankind, he is also not even making a universal statement about all Gentiles. Some Gentiles of course had heard of Torah and thus those Gentiles who had heard of Torah cannot be grouped with the Gentiles who had not heard of Torah. John Murray offers on this score,

… there are some Gentiles who did have the law and on that account did not belong to the category of which he (Paul) is speaking.”

H. A. W. Meyer reinforce Murray’s observation by offering that what Paul was saying must,

“not be understood of the Gentiles collectively … for this must have been expressed by the (definite) article … and the putting of the case otan … poin with respect to the heathen generally would be in itself untrue – but Paul means rather Gentiles among whom the supposed case concerns.”

The next observation that seriously mitigates against the Natural law case is the reality that in Romans 2:15 the Greek verb for “work” and the Greek verb for “written” agree (accusative neuter singular). The case, gender, and number of the two words grammatically mean that the “work” of the Torah is what is “written” in the hearts of the Gentiles who do not have the Torah. This bolsters the case that is being made that it is not the case that the Torah itself is written on the heart. What the Apostle is referring to here is something else that is in the hearts of the heathen that functions in the place of Torah.

Next, in order to overturn Natural law eisegesis of Romans 2:14-16 we turn to the meaning of the phrase, “the law” in the text. In the context of the passage the meaning can only be a reference to the revealed Torah that the Jews possessed. The attempt by Natural Law theologians to interpret “the law” in Romans 2:14-16 as some kind of ethereal nebulous Natural law is just laughable and violates basic hermeneutics 101. John Murray again reinforces the point that we are laboring at here by saying,

“Paul does not say that the law is written upon their (Gentiles) hearts.”

Now I will seek to set forth what Paul is getting at with the idea that the “work of the law written in their hearts”

CONSCIENCE

This “work of the law written in their hearts” The Apostle suggests is the conscience.

15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)

It is the conscience that does the work that the Torah does for those who do not have Torah. For those who have Torah, the work of Torah is to determine what is acceptable and what is not. For those who do not have Torah, the work of Torah written in the heart is the work of the conscience determining what is acceptable and what is not.

Matthew Henry in his commentary offers in support of this

“They had the work of the law. He (Paul) does not mean that work which the law commands, as if they could produce a perfect obedience; but that work which the law does.”

Hendrickson & Kistemaker in their commentary offers,

“It is that individual’s inner sense of right and wrong; his (to a certain extent divinely imparted) moral consciousness viewed in the act of pronouncing judgment upon himself, that is, upon his thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds, whether past, present, or contemplated. As the passage states, the resulting thoughts or judgments are either condemnatory or, in certain instances even commendatory.”

And just one more … this from a chap named Mounce in his commentary on Romans

“Paul was not saying that God’s specific revelation to Israel through Moses was intuitively known by pagan peoples. He was saying that in a broad sense what was expected of all peoples was not hidden from those who did not have the revelation given to Israel. Their own conscience acknowledged the existence of such a law. Thrall suggests that Paul was saying that in the pagan world the conscience performed roughly the same function as the law preformed in the Jewish world.”

Now as we consider the Biblical concept of conscience closer we learn that like all words the meaning of this word depends upon which worldview matrix that we drop it in.

Brief Explanatory Story – The meaning of the word “Cool.”

Conscience is one of those words that has been made to carry a great deal of foreign freight. In the philosophy of Stoicism “conscience” was made to mean the place where resides the infallible “sense of oughtness” resident in human nature.

The Biblical concept of conscience is different from the pagan notion of Stoicism.

Interestingly enough the Hebrew OT never refers to the “conscience.” There isn’t even a Hebrew word for it, though there are times where the KJV will translate the Hebrew word “Heart” as “conscience” but this is an example where people were interpreting instead of translating. No one who had the Law ever appealed to “conscience” as an inner judge for right and wrong. It was the Torah that served as judge for right and wrong. Since Jews had the Torah they did not need a conscience.

When we come to the NT, the word “conscience” does not appear in the Gospels and is never referenced by Jesus or His disciples. In the Epistles the Greek word we use for “conscience” can simply mean to be sincere in what one says and does.

Romans 9:1 I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit,

Barclay and Nida in their commentary on Romans point out

“conscience may be variously translated depending upon the particular set of associations connected w/ certain terms or phrases – for example, “my heart,” “my innermost,” “that which speaks within me,” or “the voice of my heart.”

The conscience does not have any ontological reality. It seems often to serve as a kind of “Deus ex machina” to communicate the source of ones convictions.

Vincent’s word studies give us insight into the meaning of conscience

“In Scripture we are to view the conscience as Bishop Ellicott remarks, not in its abstract nature, but in its practical manifestations. Hence it may be weak (I Cor. 8:7, 12), unauthoritative and awakening only the feeblest emotion. It may be evil or defiled (Heb. 10:22, Tit. 1:15), through consciousness of evil practice. It may be seared (I Tim. 4:2), branded by its own testimony to evil practice, hardened and insensible to the appeal of good. OTOH, it may be pure (II Tim. 1:3), unveiled, and giving honest and clear testimony. It may be void of offense (Acts 24:16), unconscious of evil intent or act: good as here, or honorable (Heb. 13:18). the expression and the idea, in the full Christian sense, are foreign to the OT, where the testimony to the character of moral action and character is born by external revelation rather than by the inward moral consciousness.”

So we see that those who teach that conscience is the place in human nature where there resides the infallible “sense of oughtness” are those who are teaching the meaning according to the ancient pagan philosophy of stoicism and not Christianity.

REGENERATION

As we seek to wrest Romans 2 away from those who teach, by way of pagan Natural Law theories, that God’s Law is written on the hearts of all men, we would point to the idea of the work of Regeneration.

In all other references in Scripture to the law being written in the heart what we find is a reference to the work of regeneration.

Jer. 31:33″But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, ” I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

It would be odd if in Romans 2 Paul began to use the language of the promise of the New Covenant to teach that the pagans – those who were strangers and aliens to the covenant – had written on their heart that law written on the heart which was to be the blessing of the new covenant.

So, to say, as the Natural Law theologians are want to say that all men of the law written in their hearts is to take what was to be the privileged blessing of the new covenant people and extend it indiscriminately to regenerate and unregenerate alike. I would say the position of Natural Law advocates proves to much.

Based on what has been teased out in these two message on Natural law, I must conclude that Romans 2:15 does not teach Natural law as it is commonly taught by many in the Reformed camp.

Andrew Sandlin & the Sey Marriage… Splashes Insults Everywhere

“Samuel Sey is a godly young Christian leader, and it’s tragically no surprise that his marriage to a faithful Christian woman has provoked opposition among the racists within “The New Right.” This reflects the growing re-paganization of a conservatism that has lost its tether to Christian culture. Opposition to interracial marriage is a tribalist, pagan idea. It’s inter- marriage the Bible opposes.”

Andrew Sandlin

Facebook Post

1.) Given the fact that Samuel Sey himself has insisted that he is NOT in inter-racial marriage I don’t why Sandlin is defending their non inter-racial marriage by referring to the Sey marriage as a “inter-racial” marriage.

2.) Is it “racist” for someone to observe that inter-racial marriages are not wise and so oppose inter-racial marriages since they;

a.) Have a higher rate of divorce

b.) produce children who will have split identities

c.) produce children who will have a more difficult time finding donor matches should they have medical problems

d.) do not find or provide support for the particular ethnic community that of which they will be a “part.” (See linked article)

3.) Actually it is Sandlin who is reflecting a growing paganization of a heretofore conservative ethos. The paganism that Sandlin is reflecting is Cultural Marxism and it reflects how Sandlin has lost his tether to millennium of Christian Culture as exhaustively demonstrated in Achord & Dow’s book, “Who is My Neighbor.”

Have I mentioned recently that everyone keeps ignoring that anthology and that to date nobody has answered this volume that clearly demonstrates that the Church Fathers throughout the centuries would have thought that Andrew Sandlin was a certifiable lunatic for advancing his position on inter-racial marriage.

4.) Support for inter-racial marriage is a New World Order pagan idea and Sandlin should be ashamed for giving it his full throated support.

5.) The Bible supports neither inter-racial marriages nor inter-religious marriage.

Andrew really should give this a read for proof that the Bible does not support inter-racial marriages;

https://thereformedconservative.org/ai_story_collection/on-natural-communities/?fbclid=IwAR3Xj8e1sGQg_mIEutESrPcM3QxaX7CGBy9LX1vwh_VJ7ku5J6n1sNycjRE

6.) Let me make it clear that I have no reason to doubt that Mr. & Mrs. Sey are fine Christian people. (Indeed, as of this moment I have more confidence that they are Christian people than I am convinced that Dr. Andy Sandlin is a Christian person.) Further, I am convinced that now that the Sey marriage has been contracted Christians should do all they can to support this unwise move on their part. What God has joined together let no man cast asunder.

However, at the same time Christian ministers should be working overtime to explain to their young people why this kind of inter-racial marriage is less than a good idea.

The Subtle Shift That Occurred Between Classical Marxism and Cultural Marxism

Classical Marxists believed that man was Homo Economicus. As such the Classical Marxists understood if man was to be changed, that is, if man was to be a different product than what he was what had to be changed was the Economic pool in which man was swimming. Change the economic swimming pool environment and you will change the man. Man, the Classical Marxists thought, was a economic being and so the Classical Marxists brought their big guns out to attack class, property, ownership, means of production, capital, and capitalism. However, the goal of all that was to produce the new Soviet (Marxist) man. The means was economics but the goal was always to liberate and so change man so that he was no longer in bondage to his Feudal Overlords thus becoming the new Utopian man. Change the Economics and one changes the man.

With the rise of WW I it was seen by some Marxists that this model of change was a failure. WW I announced this failure because the workers of the world did not unite and instead the proletariat from the different nations fought against their other proletariat brothers from other nations. Some of the Marxists learned via the experience of WW I that the proletariat had a higher loyalty to country than their loyalty to class categories. Shortly thereafter some of the Marxists learned that Classical Marxism was not going to gain traction in the victorious Western nations of WW I because the proletariat worker had too much prosperity at his fingertips to be swayed by the notion that revolution would set them free. Middle class workers living a prosperous life are not going to unite in revolutionary fever to throw off the bourgeoise.

A significant number of Marxists thus began to rethink their Economic Marxism model concluding that their premise that man was Homo Economicus was inaccurate. These Marxist from the Frankfurt School, following Antonio Gramsci, began to posit that man was NOT Homo Economicus, but rather should be thought of as Homo Culturae — Man the Cultural being.

Do not miss the significance of this shift. This shift is monumental because in identifying man as being primarily a cultural being what is happening behind the curtain is that man is being identified as a primarily theological being since culture is properly defined as the outward manifestation of a distinct people’s inward beliefs. Culture is theology externalized. As such when the Frankfurt school identified man as being Homo Culturae, they hit the theological nail on the head. A form of Marxism had finally analyzed their problem correctly. The problem was not, sans the classical Marxists one of economics. The problem was one of culture/theology, and the Frankfurt school intended to change the culture/theology in order to arrive at the new Marxist Man.

Remember, Marxism was never ultimately about Economics. Marxism was about creating a new Marxist man, free of the chains that bound him societies that prevented him from reaching Utopia. Because this was true the Cultural Marxist began to abandon the Economic model of Marxism for the Cultural model of Marxism. And with this the Marxist guns were no longer primarily focused upon economic realities. Now the Marxist guns would set their sites on Western Culture with the goal, in Willi Munzenberg’s words “we must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western Culture stink.” This was all done with the end in view of fulfilling the long primary goal of Marxists; the creation of the new Utopian man.

Just as Classical Marxism sought to save the proletariat from their being alienated from their labor, so Cultural Marxism sought to save Western man from his culture.

The goal remained the same as previously. Liberate and change Western man from his Captialist/Christian overlords. The means now with Cultural Marxism and now WOKEism to liberate and change would be by means of attacking the culture just as Classical Marxism had attacked Capitalist economic models previously.

Some other changes would be made along the way vis-a-vis Cultural Marxism (WOKEism) and Classical Marxism. There was to be not only a new proletariat but also a new bourgeoise.

The new proletariat was needed because this Marxism was no longer focusing on Economics. Remember the focus now is on culture. As such the proletariat of classical Marxism found in the “worker class” is changed out for a proletariat that is comprised of the pervert, the feminist, the academician, and minorities. All of these subgroups fit perfectly for the Cultural Marxist proletariat because all of them could be manipulated into believing that they had been aggrieved by Western man and Western civilization. Every new proletariat then requires a new bourgeoisies and the new bourgeoisie; the new despised and hated class that must be overthrown became the White Anglo Saxon non-pervert, non feminist Christian. Just as nobody wanted to be identified as bourgeoise when the Bolshevik took over in Russia so in the midst of this new form of Marxism does anybody want to be left being identified as White Anglo Saxon Christian.

Because this is true the white race, a lack of perversion, and the embrace of biblical patriarchy are to WOKEism today what the bourgeoise was to the proletariat in days of yore. These are the enemy and they can in no way be allowed to be anything but the enemy. This is so true that new categories have had to be invented in order to lump people in to the new bourgeoise even if they don’t naturally fit. As such we now have phrases like “adjacent white” which is intended to paint, for example, a minority member Biblical Christian as part of the hated bourgeoise. This explains why people like Clarence Thomas, Jason Whitlock, Larry Elder, Candace Owens, and Jamie Castillo, Keon Garraway and others are accused of “acting white” or of being “Uncle Toms,” or of being “adjacent white.”

Now it is the rush to be not seen as White or adjacent white even that explains why many white people and white churches are in such a hurry to agree with the new cultural Marxist proletariat. When this Marxist music stops, trust me, you don’t want to be left without a chair to sit in. Doubt me? Just as the inhabitants of the Soviet gulags about their version of musical chairs. Today White churches are doing all they can to be seen as card carrying members of the new proletariat.

McAtee Contra Wilson On Flogging Baptists Who Subscribe to Baptist Theology

Doug Wilson wrote a piece entitled “That Time Virginia Flogged A Baptist,” and in that Piece Pope Doug I argues that it was wrong for the Virginia authorities to flog the Baptist. To which I reply… “Bologna.”

Why would it be wrong for God’s Magistrate to flog a person who was advocating that the public square, by consent of the laws and the Magistrates, should allow into the public square spokesmen of every God and every religion? Why is it wrong to flog somebody for teaching that the Magistrate must serve all gods in an “even-handed way” as opposed to serving the God of the Bible by not allowing advocates of other religions and gods into the public square?

Doug argues that according to Biblical standards it was wrong to flog. However, the Magistrate, Encrease Nowell, in the illustration that Wilson runs with his article (an illustration of a different Baptist being flogged roughly a century prior) told that Baptist (Obadiah Holmes) that he was being flogged because;

“ … it is for your error and going about to seduce the people,”

In this case the Magistrates were following God’s standard as expressed in the original Westminster Confession;

III. The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the Word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven:464 yet he has authority, and it is his duty, to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordainances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed.465

Wilson is just wrong in saying that it was wrong for the Virginian Magistrates a century later to flog yet another Baptist. In point of fact any religionist, like Pope Doug I who advocates the traditionally endarkenment line that the public square should be a place where all the gods are treated even-handedly should be flogged. That Baptist minister was advocating that Jesus Christ alone should not be prioritized in the public square and for that it was just, as according to God’s Word, for him to be flogged in the public square.

Look folks, the classical Liberalism that Wilson is championing is dead. It could prosper the way it did because the public square it created — a public square that was a safe place for all the gods — found the only gods in the 18th century in the American colonies being some kind of version of the Christian God being advocated. Even then though, Baptist thinking was creating a portal through which eventually other gods that were alien to Christianity would be treated in the same even handed manner. Because of Baptist theology the god of the Mormons, the god of Islam, the god of the Talmudists, the god of the Hindus are gods who are now free to walk in the public square.

Could it be that Magistrates in the 17th and 18th century understood the implications of Baptist Christianity better than Doug Wilson does today? Perhaps those Magistrates from long ago understood the danger of Baptist theology to the idea of a Christian Nation. Perhaps those Magistrates from long ago understood the danger that Baptist theology is to a distinctly Christian social order? I mean, if Roger Williams is sending a searing letter in defense of Obadiah Holmes orthodox Reformed people ought to reason that if Roger Williams is against the flogging of Obadiah Holmes that is a good reason to be for it.

It was because our Fathers didn’t keep flogging Baptist ministers in a good Christ honoring way that we are now in the place where Baptists officially champion the right of the followers of Allah to build a mosque by filing an Amicus Brief with the courts in Muslim group’s favor.

So, here’s a vote to keep flogging Baptists until they give up on the freedom of all religions to occupy the public square. This is not freedom at all for the Christian because it takes away the freedom of the Christian to have Jesus Christ alone named as King of the public square and forces Christians to abide with false gods claiming equality in sovereignty with the God of the Bible.

We are where we are in America because Roger Williams Baptist thinking won the day. Because of that we are on the edge of a time where only people who say that Jesus Christ is Lord of the public square are the ones who are now going to be flogged.

I wonder if Doug will put a good word in for us when that time comes?