Apologetics – Page 63

Mary’s Magnificat and the Liberation Theology Narrative

he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

Luke 1:52f

The position of Mary (or Zechariah, or Simeon, or Anna, etc.) is not important because they were low on the social ladder but because they were saints of God despite their poverty and oppression. Poverty as poverty doesn’t score you any points in the Kingdom of God if one doesn’t belong to Christ and the people of God. The antithesis of the Scripture is not between rich vs. poor but between the Seed of the Serpent vs. The seed of the woman. This is underscored also in Dr. Luke’s parabolic account of the rich man (Dives) and Lazarus. Lazarus is not in Hades because he was rich and Lazarus is not in Abraham’s bosom because he was poor. Dives is an occupant of Hades because he would not listen to Moses and the prophets regarding the Messiah while Dives did listen. God does not hate the rich because they are rich and He does not love the poor because they are poor.

The emphasis in Mary’s Song is that God remembers His people who are being oppressed by the wicked mighty. The whole thrust of Luke’s songs is to demonstrate that God has not forgotten His people despite the fact it might look that way and despite the fact that they are being oppressed by wealthy wickedness in high places (Herod, Augustus Caesar etc.). The fact that the Lord Christ is born among the lowly does not prove that lowliness as lowliness is a virtue. After all, Jesus was born of the line of great King David and God includes the High Born in the nativity story by including visitation from the Kings of the East. In Scripture, God esteems those in Covenant, rich or poor, and destroys those outside of covenant, rich or poor.

The point in Luke’s Songs is not that God favors poor wicked people over righteous rich people. The point is that God has remembered Israel and He has remembered Israel despite her captivity and the low status she has sunken into. This is Redemptive History and what is being accentuated is God remembering His promise to raise up a Messiah. The character of God is what is being put on display, not the status of those whom He is remembering. What is not being accentuated is that God is social class conscious. Believe me, if the nativity story were written today, given how much the Wealthy are hated by our current Cultural Marxist clergy, God would have His Messiah born among the rich and royal to add the factor of “isn’t God amazing that He brought His Messiah among such ignoble filthy rich people.” However, what we don’t see in the nativity narrative of the cultural Marxist clergy is the amazing God who keeps His promises no matter what. No, what we see are the amazing poor people who, “naturally enough” are lifted up. Given their noble poverty they deserve it after all.

Does God bring down all the “Mighty” from their thrones? Did God bring down Job? Abraham? David? Are Zaccheus or Joseph of Arimathea to be counted as inferior saints in the New and Better covenant because they were wealthy? Is the New and Better covenant characterized now by God hating all wealthy people and loving all poor people regardless of their faith or lack of faith in Christ? Has the lack of wealth now become the new standard of inherent righteousness? Is God now for the proletariat and against the Bourgeois? Did God inspire Das Kapital?

This preoccupation of the Church in the West with Marxist categories completely flummoxes me. God loves the righteous in Christ regardless of their socio-economic status and he hates the wicked outside of Christ regardless of their socio-economic status… even if they are as poor and wretched as Dicken’s Fagin.

Why is it that we seem to think that God loves the impoverished more than the wealthy simply on the basis of their impoverishment? God loves His people in Christ. It is a certainty that the wealthy saints have a charge to keep in terms of their brethren of low estate but those of low estate are not superior to those of wealth if they are both looking to Christ and resting in him, just as the wealthy are not superior to those of poverty in terms of status before God just because they are wealthy.

God hates the unrighteous wealthy wicked because they do tend to oppress the poor but he equally hates the unrighteous impoverished wicked because they do tend to envy the rich. It strikes me that we have made the envious unrighteous wicked poor some kind of gold standard to aspire to. This is not what Scripture teaches and it is all very strange.

This then is the verdict – the light has come into the world, but men have hated the light because their deeds were evil. If you walk in the light as he is in the light, then they will hate you too, regardless of your socio-economic status. Oppression is due to the gospel and very often the estimable poor are poor due to their righteousness eliciting persecution and not because the in Christ wealthy are keeping them down.

The Implications of Biblical Election When Thinking About Social Order Issues

“There are doctrines of modern liberalism, just as tenaciously and intolerantly upheld as any doctrines that find a place in the historic creeds. Such for example are the liberal doctrines of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. These doctrines are, as we shall see, contrary to the doctrines of the Christian religion. But doctrines they are all the same, and as such, they require intellectual defense. In seeming to object to all theology, the liberal preacher is often merely objecting to one system of theology in the interests of another.”

Dr. J. Gresham Machen
Christianity and Liberalism

Our current Cultural Marxist egalitarianism problem in the Western Calvinist Churches is a reflection of the decline of genuinely Reformed soteriology. Biblical and Historical Calvinism has always advocated for limited damnation (particular redemption), where Christ is put forth as a sacrifice for only His people. God makes distinctions when it comes to salvation and men are not equal when it comes to their determined soteric status.

In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God’s chief passion is Himself. In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God does all He does for His own interest. He pursues His own interests and in the context of particular redemption, this means He willfully limits His affections to His people.

Reformed folk once understood that this had implications. As God’s love was particular so Reformed folk refused both the idea of “the Father of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.” If God restricts His love so that His love is particular so man’s love can be particular as well. In other words, God’s love and favor for His own is a communicable attribute. Like God, men can love and favor their own.

If it were the case that God did not restrict His love so that He loved all men indiscriminately then men by necessity would have to be pluralists in their affections and love all men indiscriminately and so egalitarianism would by necessity be a Christian requirement. Because of our inability to tease out the idea of God’s discriminating election we are seeing that the idea of the brotherhood of all men, when taken to its egalitarian conclusion, would be destructive of the idea of men providing uniquely for their own household (I Tim. 5:8), or positing a special love for their kin (cmp. Romans 9:3). In brief, the Arminian idea that God loves everybody equally works itself out in the destruction of family, clan, and nations and the embrace of universal love.

The connection here is that as Calvinists become weak on Limited Damnation they become strong on the Liberal Doctrines of the “Fatherhood of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.”

In this context, it is interesting that Abraham Kuyper noted that in the late 1800s the belief in Unconditional Election with respect to natural conditions like family, nation, and race was universal in every denomination, though Arminians disagreed with Election of the Soul. Listen to the great Kuyper on this matter,

“ Before I close, I feel nevertheless that one question continues to press for an answer, which accordingly I shall not refuse to face, the question namely, at what I am aiming in the end: at the abandonment of the doctrine of election … Our generation turns a deaf ear to Election [God’s order], but grows madly enthusiastic over Selection [encompassing everything from evolution to democracy, liberalism, imagination, and license] … The problem concerns the fundamental question: Whence are the differences? Why is not all alike? Whence is it that one thing exists in one state, another in another? There is no life without differentiation without inequality. The perception of difference, the very source of our human consciousness, the causative principles of all that exists, and grows and develops, in short, the mainspring of all life and thought … Whence are those differences? Whence is the dissimilarity, the heterogeneity of existence, of genesis, and consciousness? To put it concretely, if you were a plant, would you rather be a rose than a mushroom; if insect, butterfly rather than spider; if bird, eagle rather than owl; if a higher vertebrate, a lion rather than a hyena; and again, being a man, richer than poorer, talented rather than dull-minded, of Aryan race rather than Hottentot or Kaffir? Between all these there is differentiation, wide differentiation. Everywhere then differences, differences between one thing and the other; and that too, such differences involve in almost every instance, preference … This is the one supreme question in the vegetable and animal kingdom, among men, in all social life and it is by means of the theory of Selection that our present age attempts to solve this problem of problems …

Now the blade of grass is not conscious of this, and the spider goes on entrapping the fly, the tiger killing the stag, and in those cases, the weaker being does not account to itself for its misery. But we men are clearly conscious of these differences, and by us therefore the question cannot be evaded, whether the theory of Selection be a solution calculated to reconcile the weaker, the less richly endowed creature, with its existence. It will be acknowledged that in itself this theory can but incite to a more furious struggle, with a lasciate ogni speranza, voi che’ntrate for the weaker being. Against the ordinance of faith that the weaker shall succumb to the stronger, according to the system of election, no struggle can avail …

For this is precisely the high significance of the doctrine of Election that, in this dogma, as long as three centuries ago, Calvinism dared to face this same all-dominating problem, solving it, however, not in the sense of a blind selection stirring in unconscious cells, but honoring the sovereign choice of Him Who created all things visible and invisible. The determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as girl or boy, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored, or even as Abel or Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all embracing predestination … all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in Providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature … all Christians hold election as we do, in honor, both in creation and in providence; and that Calvinism deviates from the other Christian confessions in this respect only, that, seeking unity and placing the glory God above all things, it dares to extend the mystery of Election to spiritual life, and to the hope for all life to come?”

(A.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, pp.117-119)

Now that many Arminians have been smitten with the egalitarian infection, they’re just being consistent with their soteriology as it works itself out in social order thinking. Arminians denied election in terms of grace and now they deny election in terms of nature. In order for the Calvinists to turn egalitarian, however, they have to be radically inconsistent with their soteriology. Most Calvinists and Calvinist churches still confess Election with respect to God’s differentiation among men and so the unequal states of their persons as it pertains to salvation before God, but many Reformed are no longer sure about unequal states of nature. That is to say many Calvinists can no longer affirm an Election (Predestination) which affirms that not only does God elect some and not others in regards to salvation, but also that God predestines some people and peoples to an unequal status as compared to His predestinating of other people and peoples. Does this contradiction between what we might call spiritual inequality as taught in the doctrine of election and natural inequality as implied in the doctrine of predestination (and so a necessary denial of the foundational tenets of modern egalitarianism) perhaps hint at the idea that many Reformed don’t understand the implications of their Calvinism?

Certainly, everyone agrees that men are all brothers in the sense that all men are created by God and that all men thus are the image of God. Likewise, everyone can agree that all men are brothers in the sense that all men are responsible to God’s law. This is gladly conceded. However, all men are not brothers in the sense of having God as their redemptive Father. That fact that God makes distinctions among men has impact all the way down the line of our thinking.

Marriage … It Either Has A Stable Meaning, or It Means Everything and Nothing

‘Once one says that a homosexual orientation is no more culpable or disordered than a heterosexual orientation, and once one observes that Scripture does not teach that God says that homosexual activity is always wrong, I think we’re left to conclude that justice requires that the church offer the great good of marriage both to heterosexual couples committed to a loving, covenantal relationship, and to homosexual couples so committed’.

Dr. Nicholas Wolterstorff
American Philosopher
All One Body Lecture

A pedophile should be held responsible for his conduct — but not for the underlying attraction.

Margo Kaplan
New York Times Article

How long until we hear that the orientation for pedophiles is no more culpable or disordered than a heterosexual orientation? Where in Scripture do we see that bedding children (even of the same sex) is wrong if done in the context of a “loving, covenantal relationship, and to Man-boy love so committed,” as stated by Dr. Wolterstoff in regards to sodomy?

After all, if God is the one who gives the underlying attraction and if God is the one who wired some adults brains differently who are we to deny what God has done? If God has made pedophilia (or Necrophilia, or Beastiality) as merely a creational variance of sexuality who are we to challenge God?

In 1986, a short 31 years ago, SCOTUS Chief Justice Warren Burger considered by many to have been a liberal could write in the Bowers v. Hardwick decision,

“To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.”

In the same Hardwick decision Burger also cited the “ancient roots” of prohibitions against homosexual sex by quoting William Blackstone’s description of homosexual sex as an “infamous crime against nature”, worse than rape, and “a crime not fit to be named.”

Somehow, in 30 years as a culture, we have gone from a liberal Supreme Court Justice inveighing against sodomy to a well-respected Churchmen and philosopher giving his imprimatur on the same.

Also, we have to note the linguistic play that is found in describing marriage as something two people of the same biological sex can enter. Scripturally, as well as historically, marriage, by definition, is an institution that only can be occupied by males and females. In the 1888 California court case, “Sharon vs. Sharon,” we find marriage defined,

“Marriage is the civil status of one man and one woman united in law for life, for the discharge to each other and to the community of the duties legally incumbent on those whose association is founded on the distinction of sex. “

In Scripture Jesus defines Marriage as being composed of males and females,

Matthew 19:4 – Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ 5and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

So, when people begin to talk about the “church offering the great good of marriage … to homosexual couples so committed.” we should recognize that linguistic deception has just been leveraged, even if unwittingly done. Because of the definition of marriage, we can no more offer the great good of marriage to sodomite couples then we can legitimately offer the great good of the US Presidency to someone born in Kenya. Neither of the Institutions, by definition, are allowed legal occupancy by those who don’t adhere to the definition.

And while we are at it, we might as well note the same is true for the word “sex.” Given definitional realities, it is not possible for sodomites or lesbians to engage in “sex,” whatever it is they may be doing to and with one another with their reproductive organs.

When we get sloppy with our language we begin to lose what the reality that the language is supposed to represent.

A Paradigm For A New Reformation

“I have noticed the following parallel between the fourth century and the sixteenth century, periods I consider to be times of fundamental reform for the church. In both periods the dominant theology was a kind of synthesis between biblical thought and Greek philosophy: in the fourth century, Origenism; in the sixteenth, the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In both periods there came a heresy that upset the balance; in the fourth century, Arianism, in the sixteenth, the sale of indulgences by people like John Tetzel. Then came a Reformer: in the fourth century Athanasius; in the sixteenth, Luther. Then came a consolidator, someone who rethink the whole of the Church’s theology in the light of the gains of the Reformation: in the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine; in the sixteenth, Calvin.”

Rev. John Frame
A History of Western Philosophy and Theology — pg. 107

I am convinced that Rev. Frame is on to something here and I would suggest applying this template to a 21st-century setting. However, instead of Greek thought being the syncretistic factor as being added to Biblical thought and categories I would suggest that the syncretistic factor as being added to Biblical thought and categories is the hybrid form of Marxism called “Cultural Marxism.”

Per Rev. Frame’s model, I would offer something like,

1.) 20th-century syncretistic synthesis of Christianity with the Cultural Marxism originating with Antonia Gramsci, as introduced in America by the Frankfurt School (Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, Theodore Adorno, etc.) popularized by the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, and embraced in principle by many young Reformed Churchmen who would later become leading light in the Reformed Church. They absorbed this thinking during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and at the very least have said very little to overthrow this warfare on God ordained distinctions.

2.) This syncretism that developed as a combination of Christianity and Cultural Marxism begat the egalitarian heresy that currently infects all of our social order including the Church. The egalitarian heresy has given us a warfare against distinctions wherein ontology as well as roles are flattened out so as to result in a social order where all colors, differences, and distinctions bleed into one. Viva la the distinction-less society.

3.) We are still awaiting a God raised Reformer to emerge to lead the Gideon sized orthodox army to do battle with the multitudinous heretics who currently control the Church.

4.) Then comes the consolidator who will rethink the whole of theology in light of the knowledge gained in what will be a new post tenebras lux.

This is the way that God has worked historically. First, the downgrade as exemplified in one particular person, then the widespread infection, then the battle to heal as exemplified in one particular person, and finally the reconstruction, again, as exemplified in one particular person.

We might add here that with each example in each century (fourth, sixteenth, and prospectively the 21st) the issue really comes down to the Supremacy of God. Athanasius and Luther, each in their times, were contending for the Sovereignty of God vis-a-vis the desire of man to pull God off His throne. The 21st century is no less a battle for the supremacy of God. If the Egalitarian heresy is given in its head then the final outcome will be the removal of the distinction between God and man… between the Creator and the Creature.

It is also interesting here that while the Reformations in question (4th, 16th, 21st) are separated by centuries the formal cause of Reformation in each case is the issue of Scripture as Authoritative. The material causes of Reformation may switch but it seems the formal cause of Reformation is always the issue of whether or not Scripture will be taken as Authoritative. In the 4th century, the Arians refused to come under the authority of Scripture pertaining to the deity of Jesus Christ just as the Medieval Roman Catholic Church refused to submit to the authority of Scripture pertaining to the issue of justification by grace alone just as today the modern church refuses to submit to authority on the issue of God-ordained distinctions. In each Reformation, the formal cause remains the same (the authority of Scripture) while the material cause (the occasion for Reformation) changes.

In reading what I have offered here some may think that I am involved in a kind of Hegelian dialectic where I have posited a Thesis/ Antithesis/ Synthesis. Allow me to note the distinction between the Hegelian dialectic and what I am advocating here.

First, the Hegelian dialectic is man wrought in opposition to God. This is a matter of God’s providence.

Secondly, there really is no synthesis here because it is the previous synthesis that is being pushed off the scene in favor of God’s thesis reality.

Thirdly, the Hegelian dialectic presupposes that truth is always becoming. There is no absolute Truth. This paradigm presupposes absolute truth and a return to God’s reality.

Finally, the Hegelian dialectic speaks of historical “progress” via the outworking of the Geist. This approach is not about progress or process so much as it is about providence.

In brief, while the Christian offers a Thesis (proper distinctions) contra the Thesis of anti-Christianity (no distinctions allowed) no synthesis between the two or of the two is allowed. Orthodoxy allows no synthesis. Only repentance and then realignment to God’s thinking and reality.

Our role is to pray that God will work to bring the man and the moment together as He did with Athanasius’s opposition to Arius and as He did with Luther’s opposition to schoolmen of his time.

On “Out ‘Enemying’ the Enemy”

“No cultural conservative could seek to copy the left’s means and create conditioning mechanisms of our own because psychological conditioning leads to a Brave New World regardless of what attitudes it is attempting to impart. That is not where we want to end up.”

William S. Lind

In the article from which this quote comes Lind is warning against the instinct to use the techniques of the cultural Marxists in order to defeat the cultural Marxist. Lind’s point is that if we have to become like our enemy in order to defeat our enemy our enemy has defeated us inasmuch as we have become him.

Any victory that is found against the Cultural Marxists by using their techniques against them will be a victory that is defeat. Success in this way will mean failure as we become the same venomous sons of Belial that the Cultural Marxist already are. Oh, sure, people will be dancing in the streets thinking that they have had great success because the beast of Cultural Marxism has been slain but if that beast is slain by the same tools that it used to slay Biblical Christianity than whoever has won the field of battle it is not the Biblical Christians and it is not Christ.

Jesus himself told us that Satan does not drive out Satan and so we can be sure that if the techniques to drive out Satan are being used by someone else purporting to be ‘good-guys’ but who use the same techniques as Satan than it is not the case that Satan is being driven out. At best he is merely changing uniforms in order to keep ruling.

When you fight someone to win at all costs you will do literally anything to win. You will even take on that person’s vices if that is what it takes to win. You will, in essence, become that person. You become your enemy. And your enemy wins because now there’s another one of him in the world. Oh sure, your cause may well triumph but what profit is it to gain the whole world while losing your own soul? And what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Another way of saying this is that you cannot accept the presuppositions of your enemy and still expect to defeat your enemy. If you accept the premise of your enemy you lose even if you win. One cannot use the enemies methodologies, techniques, and assumptions as un-reinterpreted through a biblical grid and win without becoming the enemy.

In literature, this has been teased out a couple times that I know of. In C. S. Lewis’ “Prince Caspian,” the character Nikabrik desires to win at any and all costs. Nikabrik makes it clear that he believes in anything or anyone that will rid Narnia of the Telmarines: Aslan OR the White Witch. After the Narnians suffer many defeats at Aslan’s How and Susan’s Horn appears to have failed, Nikabrik concocts his own plan. Nikabrik invites two of his “friends” — a Hag and a Wer-Wolf — to the council, and suggests that they use black sorcery, calling up the White Witch to defeat Miraz. When the Wer-Wolf mentions preparing the blue fire, a fight breaks out between Nikabrik’s group and Caspian, Doctor Cornelius, and Trufflehunter. At that moment, Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin, who had been listening outside the door, rush in to help. During the fighting in the dark, Nikabrik is killed, though no one knows who killed him. Caspian says,

“I am sorry for Nikabrik, though he hated me from the first moment he saw me. He had gone sour inside from long suffering and hating. If we had won quickly he might have become a good Dwarf in the days of peace.”

One easily sees that Lewis’s “Nikabrik” had no problem becoming the enemy to defeat the enemy. However, even with a White Witch very real victory, there would have been no real victory.

It is possible that many of our people are going “sour inside from the long suffering and hating” that the West has had to endure since the Endarkenment. It’s perfectly understandable that some people, like Nikabrik, want victory so badly they will call on any and all powers to deliver them but at the end of the day victory achieved with these kinds of tools will remain defeat.

The other example is Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” The Fellowship of the Ring refused to wield the ring of power even though the ring of power guaranteed victory. They all understood (except possibly Boromir for a space of time) that victory with the ring meant defeat. The Fellowship refused to use the methodologies, techniques, and tools of the Evil One in order to defeat the Evil One because they understood that victory gained by techniques of darkness means defeat even if you call defeat “victory.”

The German “philosopher” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche also understood well what I’m getting at in this article. Nietzche wrote,

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

Monsters defeating Monsters leaves Monsters.

So, what are the means of victory against our enemies?

Well, first we need to realize that it has taken several generations to come to this point and so victory is not likely to come over night or with abrupt suddenness. We need to gird up our loins for a long fight that begins in our homes and with our families and then radiates out from there first into Christian churches and then to different institutions and walks of life. The victory over our Cultural Marxist enemies will only be won if we train up our children in the way of the Lord Christ and His righteousness. A lack of worldview training and catechesis in the home is almost certain to guarantee the loss of the next generation. If the enemy keeps stealing our children than all talk of victory is mere stand up comedy. Of course, this also means not sending our children to Government schools, not letting them be influenced by the Ichabod Church in the West, and not sending them to University. Likewise, this also means our children must see their parents standing for righteousness and opposing wickedness and wicked people. This can happen any number of ways from activism for Biblically righteous causes to standing in public forums contesting for Christ against the wicked. Children must not only learn it between the ears they must see it lived out with their eyes. It must be both caught and taught.

In order to be victorious in the long fight, we must also get out of the cultural current and dare to think differently than the zeitgeist. This means reading, study and research. Lots of it. I’ve known any number of families who have homeschooled and yet remain in the zeitgeist and so part of the problem because they continue to support a Republican “Patrick Henry College” type mindset for their children. These types end up being in league with the enemy that needs to be defeated.

Finally, for this article, I’m going to get out on an edge and insist that this long fight will only be won to the degree that we are Calvinists. Throughout history with the Reformation and since Calvinists have been the particular expression of Christianity that those intent on tyranny most hate. Whether you are talking the Calvinist Dutch against the Catholic Habsburgs of Spain, or the Glorious Revolution of 1689, or the American Counter-Revolution of 1776 Calvinists have always been those who are willing to resist on Biblical grounds. Inasmuch as the steel spined Calvinism (as opposed to R2K “Calvinism” and Cultural Marxist “Calvinsim”) goes into eclipse in just that much any hope for recovery goes into eclipse.

But the victory, however long it might take, begins in the home and if Christians keep routinely losing their children as they currently do all talk of looming victory is just so much happy talk.