As most readers of Iron Ink know I have had a long running contest with most (not all) of the clergy in the Reformed world on the issue of their incipient Gnosticism. Usually, this contesting comes in the context of Kinism which is merely just historic traditional Christianity. However, because the Reformed Church has become so ridden with the Gnostic impulse in this country we have to give an aspect of basic Christianity a defining word of its own. That word is Kinism.
I must say, probably to my shame, that I have become very impatient with the attacks on Kinism from the Reformed clergy, if only because after 20 years of me dealing with this subject it seems these people are impervious to not only learning but even to hearing what I, and others, have been saying. I mean this material is so simple that even a toddler can understand and yet we find men trained in seminary — their numbers being legion — continuing to say the stupidest of things such as we find most recently from Rev. Aldo Leon.
The good Rev. wrote, amidst other banalities that fell from his fingertips on the subject;
“What do R2K and Kinists have in common?
And then answered his own question;
Rev. Aldo “Gnostic” Leon
What does societal X factor even mean?
I can only guess it means something like … “That factor in Christians which is supposed to make them different from everyone else.”
If that is accurate then what Rev. Leon is arguing is that because Kinists do not believe that grace destroys nature that therefore they fail the necessary X factor.
The whole quote belies the fact that Rev. Leon has been bitten by the Gnostic bug that has bitten so many Reformed clergy today who ignorantly rail against Kinism.
was a chap named Cerinthus. One day the Apostle John was bathing in a community wash center and while there St. John discovered that the Gnostic Cerinthus had entered into the public washing centered. Irenaeus records for us St. John’s reaction to the presence of this Gnostic,” John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, ‘Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.'”
Gnosticism was a problem in the early Church and it has been a ongoing plague to the Church ever since.
Because the Gnostics considered the corporeal/material to be evil one of two responses were seen in the Church when it was infected with Gnosticism. The first was the response of denying to the body any and all pleasure often inflicting the body with pain because it was evil. The second response was that since the body was evil and since it couldn’t be escaped then it didn’t matter what someone did with the body. This led to all kinds of drunkenness, sexual deviance, and riotous living.
Today the Church continues to deal with the Gnostic impulse as is seen in the vituperation of the doctrine of Kinism. Kinism acknowledges the reality of the corporeal realm and insists that God delights in the differing races/ethnicities that He created. However the Gnostic Church with its Gnostic clergy come along and insist that the corporeal/material reality created and controlled by God as found in our human genetic constitution is a reality that can be undone when someone asks Jesus into their heart. Upon conversion we find our modernistic Reformed clergy effectively asserting that the material/corporeal reality vanishes. All the evil material genetic coding that is ours by way of creation is destroyed by Grace and we now are merely spiritual beings who need not be concerned with racial/ethnic realities. Before Christ we are racial/ethnic beings but upon conversion the Holy Spirit takes away our DNA and gives us a spiritual being-ness that transcends race/ethnicity.
This is nothing but the Gnostic Empire striking back at the Christian assertion that creation is a positive good that ought to be embraced.
Continuing with this commentary on Rev. Leon’s jejune assertions we note;
1.) Contrary to Leon, merely recognizing nature is not to defer to “some primacy of nature” as if God as creator is not over nature or does not continue to deign, as creator to name all the corporeal realm He created as “very good” — including the genetic reality of race/ethnicity.
2.) We ask Rev. Leon, if someone has parents who have red hair and they themselves as the child of those parents likewise has red hair is that deferring to some primacy of nature? Does Jesus take away someone’s red hair if and when they ask Jesus into their hearts? If not, why would we think that race/ethnicity goes away or becomes completely irrelevant upon conversion?
Really, we say again, anybody who anathematizes Kinism is a Gnostic.
My frustration find me grasping for words to communicate how dumb this kind of Gnosticism is and that especially when found those who are supposed to be the ones who are holding forth the light of truth for God’s assembly. That’s my analysis. I end this piece by quoting a couple of my Christian friends as they commented on this piece of torpidity as coming from Rev. Leon’s fingertips.
“Nature and grace. God is the source and author of both. This nit wit is asserting that nature has some existence independent of its creator or at least in his rejection of Kinism suggests that grace obliterates God created racial distinctions rather than enabling unity between those distinctions.
He’s (Rev. Leon) stupid. ”
Mark Chambers
“It never ceases to amaze me all the convoluted gibberish these guys get up to in aims of denying the obvious. Nature is a means of God. In fact, ‘nature’ encompasses all means in general. And the Reformed have always held that God works through means because He is their author who declared them good from the beginning, and worketh all things according to His will and to the good of those who love Him. Nature therefore cannot be anathematized without inditing God Himself.
But the Gnostics of our day see themselves as something wholly apart from nature and God’s means. They seem to adopt a vague theory of theosis in which they transcend matter and means into identity with God Himself. Which really makes it another permutation of the devil’s primordial offer for man to be as God.”
Dan Brannan
In the end the humor in all this is that Rev. Leon, who apparently is writing a book against R2K “theology” is the one who shares common ground with the very thing he is writing against. By railing against Kinism the good Reverend is covered with the same dank smell of Gnosticism that so completely perfumes R2K theology.
What can I say?
It is a mad mad mad mad world.