Category: Apologetics

A Short Treatise on the Unbelief of Bonhoeffer & His Neo-orthodoxy

Wishing and hoping and
thinking and praying,
planning and dreaming
each night of his charms
that won’t get you into his arms…

Dusty Springfield

I continue to expose the falsity of neo-orthodox/Barthian theology by exposing the non-Christian writing on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer, like all of the neo-orthodox do theology by way of contradiction. They do so by the usage of the Hegelian dialectic where two opposite statements or thesis are posited (thesis vs. anti-thesis) only to be resolved by a third statement (the synthesis) allegedly reconciling the two statements into a new thesis statement.

Because chaps like Barth, Bonhoeffer, Pannenberg, and Moltmann excelled at this neo-orthodox methodology they can be easily misunderstood. Because they write purposefully with the confusing dialectical theology method their writings more often than not become a bit of a Rorschach test that ends up telling us more about the reader than it does about the theology of the writer. The reader, because of the ubiquitous contradictions will end up interpreting the particular neo-orthodox theologian in light of their own presuppositions. This usually means that the interpretation is completely botched. Those who are orthodox, who do not understand the Hegelian dialectic will tend to be mesmerized by the “profundity” of the neo-orthodox writers when in point of fact those chaps are writing gibberish.

Bonhoeffer serves as a prime example. Consider this quote on the incarnation;

“Mighty God” (Isa. 9:6) is the name of this child. The child in the manger is none other than God himself. Nothing greater can be said: God became a child. In the Jesus child of Mary lives the almighty God. Wait a minute! Don’t speak; stop thinking! Stand still before this statement! God became a child!

“No priest, no theologian stood at the manger of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders: that God became human. Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology. “God is revealed in flesh,” the God-human Jesus Christ — that is the holy mystery that theology came into being to protect and preserve.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer 
God Is in the Manger: Reflection on Advent and Christmas

This sounds wonderfully orthodox until one keeps reading Bonhoeffer. Here Bonhoffer has only given one half of his dialectic. Elsewhere he can write,

“The question, ‘How?’, for example, underlies the hypothesis of the virgin birth. Both historically and dogmatically it can be questioned. The biblical witness is ambiguous. If the biblical witness gave clear evidence of the fact, then the dogmatic obscurity might not have been so important. The doctrine of the virgin birth is meant to express the incarnation of God, not only the fact of the incarnate one. But does it not fail at the decisive point of the incarnation, namely that in it Jesus has not become man just like us? The question remains open, as and because it is already open in the Bible.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Christ the Center – p. 105

Here the virgin birth is only a “hypothesis.’ Here the virgin birth is both historically and dogmatically questioned. Here the biblical witness is ambiguous. Here the incarnation fails at the decisive point that Jesus had become a man just like us. Finally, the question of Jesus incarnation remains open as and because it is already an open question in the Bible. It is not God’s revelation that authorizes the incarnation. It is, as we shall see, some kind of mystical encounter with the idea of an incarnation that scripture does not have a final word on the validity of said incarnation.

Here we have the other side of the Hegelian dialectic – the other side of the purposeful contradiction. This is classic “theology by contradiction.” This is classic Hegelianism. This is not orthodox historic Christian theology. This is anti-Christ theology because the Scriptures are set aside as questionable and because the miracle is explained in neo-orthodox theology as myth and myth by definition strips the historical supernatural events of the scripture of both their historicity and their supernatural reality.

Neo-orthodoxy does not believe that the supernatural is possible in the sense of an event demonstrably happening in space and time. However, Neo-orthodoxy saves the impact of the miraculous by insisting that even though the miraculous didn’t occur in space and time history, it did occur in the sense of being part of the belief paradigm of the disciples and the early church. The event, be it incarnation, resurrection, or ascension are not events that actually occurred but were necessary myths that carried the church forward.

With that in mind we understand that Bonhoeffer, like all neo-orthodox theologians are talking out of both sides of their Hegelian mouths. These men believe in a closed universe where the supernatural can’t literally transpire. However, they also understand that an outside word is needed in a fallen world and so they take that which is subjective (the beliefs of the early church that the miracles really happened) and objectify the subjective beliefs of the disciples and the early church so that the result is a subjective objective. The miracles didn’t really occur but the subjective (non-true) beliefs of the disciples regarding the miracles and supernatural, which are recorded in a non-supernatural scripture, end up serving in the stead of the miraculous and the supernatural. Further, the subjective of the early church which has become the objective outside word for the continuing church cannot be really objective until any future convert encounters these same subjective objectives in their own lives, in some kind of mystical personal and private encounter, thus turning the early church’s subjective objectives into their own subjective objective.

What needs to be seen is that there is no objective objective in all this. All there is subjectivity pretending to provide an objective outside word. What happens here is that personal experience is blown up like a helium balloon and that helium balloon subjective experience replaces any notion of an objective Word that genuinely comes from outside of us that is the inspired Word of God.

So, while Bonhoeffer can talk in flowery tones about the incarnation the fact of the matter is that the man does not believe that it actually happened in space and time history. Nor does he believe that Holy Scripture gives a objectively true word regarding the incarnation. However, Bonhoeffer does believe in the incarnation in the sense that it is true for him and for all those who have had a personal and experiential encounter which serves to give the objectively true status of the incarnation.

However, where the neophyte reads Bonhoeffer they can come away being overawed by his piety and feigned humility.

So, having noted all this where is the hegelian dialectic in Bonhoeffer’s writing on the incarnation?

Thesis: The incarnation of Jesus is dubious and scripture certainly does not warrant belief in the fact that Jesus became a man just like us.  The biblical witness does not give clear evidence of the incarnation.

Anti-thesis — God became a child. In the Jesus child of Mary lives the almighty God. God is revealed in the flesh.

Synthesis – Christian theology finds its origin not in the revelation of Scripture but in the subjective “wonder of all wonders.” Theology finds its origins not in the revelation of God but in the subjective “holy mystery.” Note the incarnation is acknowledged but it is acknowledged as unwitnessed by theologians and this despite the presence of the theologians Mary & Joseph who the inspired historian Luke gives record. The emphasis in Bonhoeffer’s wonder lies not in the revelation of Scripture but in the Holy Mystery of it all.

In giving us this dialectic the emphasis falls on the personal encounter and experience of the sovereign individual resting on that same experience and not on the objective inspired Word of God. The incarnation is a myth that becomes true only when someone has a mystical encounter that amounts to putting faith in faith and not faith in God’s revelation.

In this Hegelian dialectic the objective reality of the incarnation (and all miracles) as recorded in Holy Writ fades into the non-reality and is replaced with faith in an event (myth) that we have no objective certainty actually transpired in real space and time.

Neo-orthodoxy is heretical and Bonhoeffer was no Christian.

 

 

ARP Special Moderator Report on Kinism Discovered to Have Invented Facts

https://pactuminst.substack.com/p/arp-special-moderators-committee

Wherein it is demonstrated by the Director of the Pactum Institute, Dr. Adi Schlebush, that not only does the ARP get the facts wrong, but also that the ARP was creating “facts” and footnotes out of thin air.

How can this kind of mistake be made in an official document and any credibility be retained by the organization inventing facts and footnotes in order to try and substantiate their libel?

Continuing to Nibble Away on the Fatuous ARP Report on Kinism

” Similarily, John Girardeau dealt critically with Dabney’s view of black men and women in the South.”

ARP study report on Kinism

Girardeau, like Dabney, Thornwell, and Palmer was one of the great Reformed ministers of the ante-bellum south. I would recommend everyone read Girardeau’s book “Calvinism and Evangelical Arminianism” in order to aid in seeing the emptiness of Arminianism.

It is true that Girardeau disagreed with Dabney but what Girardeau proposed as an alternative to Dabney’s proposal for blacks worshiping in the South is something that every Kinist would salute every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

It is true the Girardeau, like Stonewall Jackson, worked in ministering to black slaves and encouraging them in the Christian faith. However, both Girardeau and Gen. Jackson did their work in the context of a social order that accepted slavery as the norm. Neither Girardeau nor Jackson challenged the system of slavery, though both sought to alleviate its sometimes harsher realities.

We need to keep in mind that Rev. John Girardeau served as a chaplain in the confederate Army in a South Carolina unit that participated in numerous battles against the Jacobin and abolitionist Yankees and the ARP covenanter types that supported the Yankee slaughter and rape of the South. To invoke Girardeau and suggest that Girardeau was some kind of proto-ARP type egalitarian is just ridiculous as we shall see.

Now, as we said, it is true that Girardeau sought to modify Dabney’s more extreme approach but let’s consider the Kinist like proposals that Girardeau put forth,

When the issue of black worship came up in the Southern Presbyterian church Girardeau, against Dabney, proposed three different options for Black Presbyterians. Girardeau proposed,

(1) separate Black churches and presbyteries with ordained officers

(2) Black churches set up as “missionary congregations” without ordained officers

(3) Black churches established as branches of White churches, with ordained officers who did not have authority in councils with White members.

Now, I don’t know of one Kinist who would object to any of these proposals by Girardeau. Indeed, anybody proposing today what Girardeau proposed would be labeled a dirty rotten Kinist by the ARP egalitarians. And yet, the ARP document the opening quote is lifted from tries to suggest that Girardeau shares the ARP egalitarian disposition. This is false as seen in those proposals above.

This is more 9th commandment violation, this time against Girardeau, all to the end of trying to smear contemporary Kinists by trying to march Girardeau out as someone who would object to Kinists today, when in point of fact Kinists today would agree with all of Girardeau’s above proposals.

This sense of obligation to the black community was not unique to Girardeau. We have already mentioned Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson but we need also mention James Henley Thornwell. Thornwell once said of blacks,

“The Negro is one blood with ourselves — that he has sinned as we have, and that he has an equal interest with us in the great Redemption. Science, falsely so called, may attempt to exclude him from the brotherhood of humanity…. but the instinctive impulses of our nature combined with the plainest declaration of the Word of God, lead us to recognize in his form and lineaments — his moral, religious, and intellectual nature — the same humanity in which we glory as the image of God. We are not ashamed to call him our brother.”

Dr. James Henley Thornwell
Sermon — Rights and Duties of Masters

Yet, ARP types are forever condemning men like Thornwell. The fact of the matter is that the ARP types no more understand today’s Kinists as witnessed by how they constantly and repeatedly misinterpret what Kinists advance, then they understand men like Girardeau and Thornwell of the past.

McAtee Contra Mundum

“Many today seek to pervert another great difference that the creator established. God made man of diverse races, but some would fly in the face of God’s creating genius and merge the races into oneness. The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with and intermarry with, people of their respective race; this is a part of their God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races. They even dress themselves in holy self-righteousness and claim to be seeking the unifying purpose of God. The present chaos in modern society will bear witness that they are doing the exact opposite. Crying for oneness they create division; denying diversity they destroy unity. True unity between the races on this earth can only be through the recognition and promotion of the God-given diversity of the races.”

Rev. John Edwards Richards (1911-1989)
One of Key founders of PCA

Sermon on Christian Unity

“In order to support their principles, they selectively quote our shared ancestors in the faith in service of their wicked ideas. Even if they accurately portray the writings of the past the ARP Church is bound by WCF 1.10, “The supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.” It is good and right to disagree with faithful men of the past when what they posit violates the teaching of God’s word. In the spirit of Paul in Acts 17 at Berea, these men would welcome and would be encouraged by correction according to the Bible.”

ARP’s Special moderator’s committee on Kinism and Race Realism

1.) There are now two Anthologies well over 500 pages each which give these quotes that these idiots are saying that Kinists “selectively quote our shared ancestors in the faith in service of their wicked ideas.” People can get a copy of the 2nd edition of “Who Is My Neighbor,” as well as “A Survey of Racialism in the Sacred Christian Tradition.” The Kinist case is contained therein folks. Generation after generation over the course of over a millennium of Kinist church fathers embracing biblical Christianity with its normative embrace of Kinism. I have sprinkled this blog with quote after quote from the greats on this subject and what we have discovered is that some form of Kinism has been embraced by all men in all places at all times — except for the Anabaptist levelers and Covenanter nutcases.

a.) Note that the ARP dupes want to call the father’s “our shared ancestors,” while at the same time admitting that these venerated fathers embraced the very same putatively wicked ideas which Kinists now embrace as handed down to them by the fathers the ARP viper’s call “our shared ancestors.”

b.) The ARP clowns accuse Kinists of selectively quoting the fathers in order to support our case. This is a mere assertion with zero proof. I challenge these low IQ clergy to go ahead and take those anthologies I mentioned above and show us where we have “selectively quoted” in a fashion wherein the meaning of the quote has been obscured or changed. These false shepherds keep asserting this kind of thing but then refuse the spade work of demonstrating where that has occurred.

2.) The idea found in the quote above from the ARP is a real howler. If only the fathers could have lived during this enlightened time in order to be instructed by the Andy Webb, Drew Poplin, Benjamin Glaser and Jeff Stivanos, they would certainly realize the errors of their ways. If they could have only been instructed by Andy, Drew, Bennie, and Jeff they would repent in dust and ashes saying what their fathers before them had held. Honestly, can you see Kuyper, Vos, the Hodges, Machen, Augustine, Winthrop, Calvin, Chrysostom, etc. sitting at the feet of Andy, Drew, Bennie, and Jeff and just be gob smacked by their wisdom on the virtues of Alienism vis-a-vis Kinism? Yep, I’m sure that Lancelot Andrews, John Gill, John Dagg, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, Thomas M’Crie etc. would rise after a teaching session and say to Andy, Drew, Bennie, and Jeff, “We thank ye sirs for showing us the error of our ways.” The hubris of the ARP viper nest is jaw dropping.

3.) Notice with the statement above, the ARP gang who can’t shoot straight is assuming that the fathers did not come to their conclusion about social order arrangements and race without reference to Scripture.

4.) Allow me to say again that it is utterly ridiculous for the ARP Apple Dumpling gang to say that the fathers, if alive today, would agree with them. Instead, these fathers would be siding with McAtee, Ketcham, Underwood, Duggan, Spangler, Williams, etc.. I find myself often being encouraged in my allegiance to the doctrines of basic Christianity to think of myself as being surrounded and cheered on by the great cloud of witnesses that the ARP grave diggers want to bury.

I and my cohorts are right. I know the men who are standing with me on this issue. They are, like me, fallible and have need to constantly confess their sins but on this issue,

We will stand our ground
And we won’t back down

Answering Rev. Jeff Stivasonn’s Silly Accusations Against Rev. Sam Ketcham

Kinism, and by extension Race Realism, fails to understand something vital. Genetics are not the source of blessing. The gospel is the source of blessing. Samuel Ketcham illustrates this error in a Substack article titled “Race and Nature,” stating, “When the white man took the true religion around the world, the Holy Spirit made their mission effectual. But to deny that their superior culture, language, and race had anything to do with it—is foolish.” In this statement, Mr. Ketcham has undermined the Reformed gospel.”

Jeff Stivason
A Word to Kinists; The biblical error of ‘race realism’ and related beliefs
RP Witness

1.) It is true that “Genetics are not the source of blessing,” but it is equally true, and Stivason misses this, that genetics are the product of God’s blessing. Ketcham captures this distinction when he writes (and Sitvason quotes) “the Holy Spirit made their mission effectual.” Ketcham clearly ascribes all glory to God while at the same time recognizing that glorifying God is inclusive of the fact that God’s grace alone accounts for a superior culture, language, and race. Stivason is thus seeking to divide what Ketcham would never separate and Stivason is doing so in order to make heresy out of that which is reflective of the Christian confession and faith.

2.) It is Stivason who is the one who is undermining the Reformed Gospel by insisting that it is Gnostic man who spreads a Gnostic gospel. God, by His grace alone, and for reasons known only to Him, chose the WASP, inclusive of all God made the WASP to be according to His race, culture and language, to be His tool for taking the Gospel across the globe. Is Rev. Stivason really arguing that superior culture, language, and race of the white man, all as inherited by grace alone, had nothing to do with their missionary effort? If Stivason is arguing that then Stivason is indeed a thorough-going Gnostic and ought to be brought up on charges.