Apologetics – Page 5

Is Theonomy Naturally Libertarian? Rushdoony Weighs In

Recently, I’ve noticed the Thomists insisting that Theonomists are by definition Libertarian. The most recent one mouthing that is Thomas Achord. I’ve seen Wolfe regurgitate this in the past. It is so frequent that I think they are trying to make it a ear worm of sort. Repeat it enough and the normies will just spew it out. Here is the latest statement as coming from Achord;

“Has anyone explained why theonomy, seemingly naturally, took on a libertarian framework?”

There can be no doubt that many theonomists have a libertarian framework. However, the idea that theonomy took this on “naturally” is just bogus.So, we see that like all good lies there is some truth to the statement above from Achord. There were those in the Theonomic movement who read their theonomy through the prism of Libertarianism instead of reading Libertarianism through the prism of God’s Law-Word (theonomy). The biggest offender here was Gary North and Rush made a mistake not squashing his son-in-law on this score. But there have been others in North’s wake. Guys like Joel McDurmon, Andrew Sandlin, and Doug Wilson have strong libertarian tendencies.

But is it really the case that Theonomy is naturally Libertarian or is this just a way to discredit original theonomy? Well, R. J. Rushdoony is someone who knows a little about Theonomy as he can legitimately be said to be the grand-daddy of theonomy. Listen to Rushdoony inveigh against Libertarianism;

“Libertarianism today which passes for conservatism is really a radical relativism with regard to everything except man. It talks about free market economics, but it does not believe in economic law. There are libertarians for example in the Los Angeles area and most of you could think of several who conduct seminars in this area, in Orange County and here. They claim to be teaching a free market economy. They will use free market economists… but in effect what they are teaching is a free market for all ideas and practices.

So that, when you push these people they say that I do believe it, since I believe in this total free market, in the right of marxism to practice marxism, I believe in the right of homosexualism to practice homosexuality (and Hess is in favor of this), I believe in the right of cannibals to be cannibals, I believe in the free market of all the ideas and practices. In other words, everything is equally false and equally true. In such a philosophy there is no truth to free market economics because there is no truth outside of man. As a result his position is an absolutism with regard to man. Man is his own God and there is no truth outside of man, therefore no system of economics, no system of religion, no philosophy can be true, only man as he is whatever he is is the truth.”

https://pocketcollege.com/full.html
IBL06: Sixth Commandment
Coercion

The only Libertarian impulse that was characteristic of Rushdoony was his hatred of centralized and leviathan Government. Rushdoony, following Scripture, believed that Government should be diffused and variegated between self, family, church, local, state, and finally federal. What we are getting today from many Thomists is advocacy for a kind of Nationalism that is top down that would make Abraham Lincoln proud. There is a good deal of Leviathan impulse with some people who are advocating for a “Christian” Franco or a “Christian” Pinochet or even a “Christian” Mussolini. There is plenty of Statists right now running around under the banner of “Nationalism” who need to be hooked up to a paleo-libertarian IV drip.

So the next time the Thomists try to suggest that theonomy is automatically Libertarian tell them that they don’t know what they are talking about. If they were honest that truth wouldn’t be news to them.

Stephen Wolfe’s Dualism Baldly Stated

“More than any other discipline, theology is prone to becoming a political ideology. Theology’s source is supernatural; it’s propositions are above nature. And so people use it to conceal or to generate “tension” with obvious natural truths known by reason and experience.

Mixed with doctrines of utter depravity, theology is a constant source of trouble for basic truths informed by experience. Everything you think you know from observation, or from deep instinct, is actually “fallen” and needs to be replaced by seemingly absurd supernatural ethics.”

Stephen Wolfe
X posting

Bret responds,

When I read this I couldn’t belief Wolfe was serious since this was such a blatant appeal to the scholastic dualism wherein grace and nature stand opposed to one another. Note here that for Wolfe there are two sources of truth. One source is theology which is supernatural. The other source is natural which comes by “reason and experience.” These two sources of truth conflict with one another because supernatural truths are to be confined to an area that deal with matters that are “above nature,” while natural truths are, presumably, to stay out of “the above nature domain.” To be faithful in interpreting reality one has to keep in mind these two different truth sources and apply accordingly.

Now, as to this area of Wolfe’s “natural truths,” we find an epistemological appeal to autonomous man’s

1.) reason
2.) experience
3.) observation
4.) deep instinct

However, Wolfe’s problem here (a problem shared by all Thomistic Natural Law “thinkers”) is first the presupposition that reason isn’t itself fallen, and so is an untrustworthy guide for interpreting reality. The second problem that Wolfe has here is that experience, observation, and deep instinct all themselves are held to be likewise not affected by the fall. The four factors listed above do not suffer the consequences of original sin but are, in Wolfe’s classic scholasticism, all trustworthy guides to interpreting reality. Reason, experience, observation, and deep instinct being definitional of who we are as humans all share in our fall and so are not sources of knowledge that can be cordoned off from theology as the source of truth.

Another thing that Wolfe does here is he tries to suggest that those non-dualist Reformed folks disagreeing with him are guilty of embracing “utter depravity.” Wolfe is trying to turn the pedestrian Reformed doctrine of Total depravity into the obscene doctrine of Utter depravity. It is most certainly not utter depravity to teach that all of man is fallen including his reason, experience, observation, and deep instinct.

Scripture supports this doctrine of total depravity which teaches that man’s experience, reason, observation, and deep instinct are fallen.

Romans 8:7 teaches

“The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

And Ephesians 4:17f teaches,

¹⁷This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as ^[f]the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, ¹⁸having 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; ¹⁹who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

I must say that it is past odd that Wolfe, who repeatedly noted in his recent book that he was no theologian and so had no intent to take up theology, has apparently as of late become a theologian and so can post on theological matters like total depravity.

However, the fact is that Wolfe is a theologian — just as all men are — and only sought to sidestep thorny issues in his book by seeking to push theology off the table as he took up the subject of Christian Nationalism.

In closing, I can’t help but note how close Wolfe is to blasphemy when he above writes above about appealing to “absurd supernatural ethics.”

Wolfe is a practitioner of dualism and so is to be warned against. It is true that the man comes to some conclusions that we wholeheartedly salute but his methodology finds him to be nought but a blind old sow who finds a felicitious acorn once in a while.

On Those Reputed To Be Jews

“The Six Million constitute a lay religion with its own dogma, commandments, decrees, prophets, high priests and Saints: Saint Anne (Frank), Saint Simon (Wiesenthal), Saint Elie (Wiesel). It has its holy places, its rituals and its pilgrimages. It has its temples and its relics (bars of soap, piles of shoes, etc.), its martyrs, heroes, miracles and miraculous survivors (millions of them), its golden legend and its righteous people. Auschwitz is its Golgotha, Hitler is its Satan. It dictates its law to the nations. Its heart beats in Jerusalem, at the Yad Veshem monument … Although it is largely an avatar of the Hebraic religion, the new religion is quite recent and has exhibited meteoric growth … Paradoxically, the only religion to prosper today is the “Holocaust” religion, ruling, so to speak, supreme and having those sceptics who are openly active cast out from the rest of mankind: it labels them “deniers,” whilst they call themselves “revisionists.”

Robert Faurisson

Former French Professor of Literature at Lyon University
Statement regarding the religious implications of the Holocaust narrativeNow, immediately there will be those who will scream that Faurisson was a holocaust denier. This in spite of the fact that the uber-Leftist Jewish Academic Noam Chomsky once wrote; “I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust…I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson’s work.” One should also note that if even Auschwitz in the early 90s had to revise their originally grossly inflated death count total down from four million. The Chicago Tribune reported in 1992;

“Jewish and Polish scholars of the Holocaust now agree that the Auschwitz death toll was less than half the four million cited here for four decades. The actual number was probably between 1.1 million and 1.5 million-and at least 90 percent of the victims were Jews.”

It would seem to be reasonable to believe, that in light of this gross overestimation (a gross overestimation that lasted for almost 50 years) of death totals in Auschwitz that it is likely the case that gross overestimations were made in the numbers reported from other camps. The idea that the numbers were routinely grossly inflated has been reported not only by Faurisson but also by others such as David Irving and Ernst Zundel.

I, myself, do not have a concrete opinion on the matter of total deaths suffered by those reputed to be Jewish though I can easily see how it serves as an advantage for those reputed to be Jewish to continue to cling to these numbers. While, I do not have an established opinion on the total death toll on those reputed to be Jewish I do find it curious that so much is made of this death toll in comparison to the horrendous death toll of other tribal communities that receive comparatively little attention. For example, there was a horrendous holocaust of Christian Ukranians by Jewish Bolsheviks under Stalin. Also, there was a horrendous holocaust of Christian Armenians by the Dönme (Jewish) “Muslim” Turks (members of the Sabbatai Zevi cult). We should also mention that holocaust of over 1 million German “disarmed enemy forces” (nomenclature used to skirt the Geneva Convention treatment requirement for POWs) inflicted by the Allies upon surrendering German troops after WW II, the holocaust visited upon the Khmer people by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the late 1970s, and the holocausts of Mao visited upon the Chinese in both his “great leap forward,” and during the later “cultural revolution.” Indeed, the 20th century could be labeled as the “Holocaust century” — especially were we to add the holocaust of the unborn.

And yet I’d be willing to bet the farm that 9 out of 10 Americans have heard only of the Holocaust visited upon those reputed to be Jews. One is left asking… “Why is that?” A cynic might say that the answer presents itself when one notices what people group it is that has been the guiding light of the Western media / Hollywood since its inception. Those who own the news/entertainment report the news.

Those reputed to be Jews have gotten a good deal of mileage out of their unique ownership of the trademarked word “Holocaust.” They have been able to play the global victim due to their trademark ownership. This is an insurmountable advantage when living in a WOKE global philosophy that prioritizes the oppressed victim over and above the evil oppressor class. Those reputed to be Jews have, because of their holocausted status, have become the greatest victims of them all. In the game of Cultural Marxist poker, where he who is the greatest victim hold the greatest hand, the reputed Jews who were holocausted hold the royal flush against all competing victimhood hands. The reputed Jews who were holocausted are the trump that trumps all trump. Nobody can out victim them.

Their victimhood card was played again just a couple days ago when their Prime minister Netanyahu, invoking the holocaust, said;

“No Nation Came to the Aid of Jews During the Holocaust.”

I think all those boys who died on the beaches of Normandy might argue otherwise.

But, all argumentation is irrelevant. When you hold the royal flush of victimhood nothing else matters, and that was the card, Netanyahu played when he said that.

This returns us thus to the opening Farisson quote. The Holocaust has been turned into a religion. Some wags have taken to calling it “Holocaustianity.” Farisson fails to mention above that Holocaustianity also has its own unique Messiah and the Messiah of Holocaustianity are those who we routinely call “Jews.” They are their own saviors, and one of the means of saving themselves is this new religion wherein all have to bow before their very real tragic history, being required at the same time to ignore the very real tragic history of many other groups who have experienced attempted genocide. If other peoples are to be sympathized with then the sympathy with which those reputed to be Jews are sympathized with becomes diluted and reduced in its guilt invoking power.

Another advantage of Holocaustianity is that serves as a “get out of jail free” card. Any behavior by those reputed to be Jews can be overlooked because, “after all they are the greatest victims of all time.” Whether it is the Deir Yassin massacre, or the sinking of the USS Liberty, or the bombing of the King David Motel, or the ethnic cleansing of Christian Palestinians, it can all be washed away because “we were holocausted.”

Even if Faurisson was wrong about holocaust death totals, the point he makes about the creation of a new religion is spot on. That Faurisson is accurate on this point is seen by that Lawmakers in several U.S. states have recently pushed for laws defining antisemitism so as to censor wrong-speak. One sees the problem here when one considers that there has been no push for laws defining anti-Christian speech so as to censor wrong-speak against Christians. I would submit this is an example of holocaustianity at work. Especially, when living in a climate where antisemitism is defined as disagreeing with someone reputed to be Jewish.

These kinds of things need to be said with the coming of Trump. Trump has surrounded himself with Zionists (Hegseth, Stefanik, Huckabee to name just a few) and Trump has been labeled by Netanyahu as “the greatest friend Israel as ever had in the White House.” Radio Personality Mark Levin recently introduced Trump as “Our First Jewish President.” In light of all this voices need to be raised warning, (paraphrasing Pat Buchanan here) about the continued increasing Israeli occupation of America.

I shouldn’t need the tag that finds me saying, “I am not pro-Arab or pro-Muslim.” I am not even “anti-those reputed to be Jews.” I am merely pro Christian and I don’t think that anybody but Christians should have special protection in a nation that was established on Christian principles and I am against politically correct poker.

Zuidema & McAtee On The Ecclesiasticizing of Christianity

“The ecclesiasticizing of religion necessarily calls into being the profaning of the non-ecclesiastical area …. the ecclesiasticized church calls into being a secularized world… The more church becomes ecclesiasticized, the more it will profane life outside the church and abandon it to profanation… The more the Church profanes life, the less it becomes the humble servant of Christ and his spiritual world dominion… people lament, certainly not without justification, about the ongoing secularization of life in the lands populated and governed by Western peoples. Concurrent with this secularization comes the distressing problem…and oppressive reality of human emancipation as the self-liberation out of the bonds to God and his Word… This is a problem which, unless it leads man to retrace his steps in this emancipation, will irretrievably abandon us to nihilism and the destruction of every last human worth, human honor, human value, and human responsibility…”

S. U. Zuidema

Communication and Confrontation

1.) Ecclesiasticizing of religion = Christianity existing only for the sake of the church. This is the goal and object of Radical Two Kingdom “theology.”

2.) This is merely the admission that if Christianity is to retreat from the public square the consequence will be a vacuum that is filled by some other prevailing religion that shapes and informs the public square. The public square can never be “neutral.” The public square is always the incarnation and thus expression of some religion. The public square only exists as being animated by religion.

3.) It is true that the public square because of secularization becomes increasingly profane. However, the profanation of the secular realm for the Christian is the divinizing or sacralizing of the public square as consistent with the tenets of the false religion that is shaping and informing the public square. In other words the profanation of the public square according to the standards of the Christian religion becomes the sacralizing of the public square according to the standards of whatever religion replaces Christianity. It’s not that the public square is no longer set apart as belonging to the God of Christianity. It is that the public square is set apart as belonging to the god of some other faith system (religion).

4.) Radical Two Kingdom Theology (R2Kt) is doing the devil’s work and as such ministers who imbibe R2K theology are of their Father the devil, intentionally or unintentionally. They are doing the work of the devil because in their work to ecclesiasticize the Christian faith they are de-Christianizing the public square in favor of some other religion which will fill the vacuum that their de-sacralizing the public square has done.

5.) When the Christian religion is ecclesiasticized the consequence is that men are released from the guiding ethos of the Christian faith. Being thus “liberated,” from Christianity in their everyday living because of the clergy’s work to ecclesiasticize the Christian faith men instantly experience bondage to some other false demon god. If men will not have the freedom that comes from living in the constraints of God’s Word then they will live in bondage to false demon gods who promise absolute libertinism. How free is a goldfish who has been set free from their fish bowl? How free is a train that is free from it’s tracks? The R2K false religion, because it ecclesiasticizes the Christian religion is guaranteed to be the greatest engine of bondage ever invented by Satan’s engineers.

6.) Unless the Lord Christ grants Reformation and renewal and delivers us from this sulfur laden doctrine of R2K that ecclesiasticizes the Christian faith mankind will continue to de-man themselves in pursuit of ever greater expressions of “freedom.” This in turn will lead to the nihilism that Zuidema speaks of, as well “as the destruction of every last human worth, human honor, human value, and human responsibility…” If the public square will not be ruled by the standards of a vibrant Christianity that informs and applies to the public square then the consequence will be the loss of true meaning and then the loss of the manishness of man. Finally, the coup de grâce will be the loss of Christianity in the ecclesial (the Church). If all that surrounds the Church is a public square that is being governed by the impulse of a false religion then the inevitable consequence is that the Church itself will fall to the public square god that was given hegemony by a Christian Church that had ecclesiasticized the Christian faith.

7.) This is not some kind of children’s game. If we cannot arrest this demonic work of ecclesiasticizing the Christian religion we will have reached a pivot in the history of mankind wherein we will find a great descent of darkness falling upon mankind.

Quoting Dr. Charles Hodge From His Theological Journal Article; “Emancipation”

Numerous people in “Reformed” “Churches” today are going after a handful of ministers today because they refuse to embrace what we might call “Racial Marxism.” Fathers like Dabney, Thornwell, Palmer, Girardeau, Machen, Rushdoony, and even Morton Smith are currently anathema to modern Reformed thought and so ministers today who advocate, in any measure, what those men advocated are being given the left foot of fellowship.

However, the views that these men held when it came to the issue of race were not unique to the men of the South, but were held by Reformed theologians of the North, including a giant of the Reformed faith, Dr. Charles Hodge. In a theological Journal before the War Against The Constitution the great Charles Hodge wrote on page 549;

“Another feature of that plan (to compensate slave owners for their freed slaves) was the expatriation of the liberated blacks. This also when feasible is wise. There are natural laws which forbid the union of distinct races in the same commonwealth. Where the difference is slight, as between Saxons and Celts, or the Teutonic and Romaic families, the different elements are soon fused. But even here we find that they often refuse to combine and remain apart for ages, the weaker constantly sinking, and the stronger constantly advancing. We have examples of this in the French payans of Canada, and Louisiana. The effect of the amalgamation of distinct races is seen in the physically, intellectually and socially degraded mongrel inhabitants of Mexico and South America. In these cases the chief elements were the Spanish and Indians, elements less widely separated than the Anglo Saxon and the Negro. The amalgamation of these races must inevitably lead to the deterioration of both. It would fill the country with a feeble and degraded population, which must ultimately perish. For it is a well ascertained fact that the mulatto is far more frail than either the white man or the negro. We read in the disastrous physical effects of the amalgamation of the blacks and whites, a clear intimation that such amalgamation is contrary to the will of God, and therefore is not an end which statesmen ought in any way to facilitate.”

Dr. Charles Hodge
Reformed Theologian – Old Princeton
Article — Emancipation

Now, the point here is not necessarily that Charles Hodge was correct in this view. The point here is that this view was considered consistent with the Reformed faith and nobody was screaming for Hodge to be excommunicated for this view.

This compels us to ask; “Does truth change?” If it was taught for centuries that race was/is real and that certain considerations must be made because race is real (as the two books “Racialism in Sacred Tradition,” and “Who Is My Neighbor” clearly demonstrates) then how can “Reformed” denominations today be seeking to cast out clergy who hold to comparatively thin versions of what the Church has believed for millennium– and that in all times and in all places? Isn’t this demonstrating a kind of cultural or historical relativism where these “Reformed” denominations are saying that truth is culturally conditioned and so what was true for one generation is a lie and offense for another generation and so cannot be allowed?

The warfare in Reformed denominations (ARP, PCA, OPC, etc.) has to end lest these denominational bodies be seen as fighting against God.