Category: Apologetics

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee … Christianity Means Nationalism

Sixthly, in looking at the Christian view of nationality, it was seen: that the Triune God ordained all the various (mineral, plant, and animal) kingdoms of His universe and that He alone rules the nations of men; that man’s obedience to the “dominion charter” would ultimately have led to the development of the various nations to the glory of God, even irrespective of the fall; that nationality is a historically grounded and plastically qualified societal relationship proceeding sphere sovereignty and directly from God; that sin has marred national development and international relationships; that the supranational tower of Babel (cI. the aim of communist eschatology!) was destroyed by God because contrary to His purposes as set out in the “dominion charter”; that the existence of the various nationalities and languages was thus caused by God and is pleasing to Him; that national isolation and supranational miscegenation are both equally wrong, for God would have all nations worship Him and love one another as nations; that Christ enjoined both love of one’s own nation and of other nations but particularly the Christianization of all the nations (in His Great Commission); that the events of the first New Testament day of Pentecost, while promoting good international relationships, also reinforced and sanctified nationality as such and in no way sought to transcend it; and that New Testament Christians maintained their nationality and taught that others should do the same,142 while yet working for improved national and international relationships as part of and as a result of their obedience to Christ’s mandate to evangelize all the nations, until all nations have become Christianized and, even after the final judgment, maintain their nationality and live in perfect harmony with the other nations in the new Jerusalem forever with all nations under the Triune God!

So the Christian doctrine of nationality is diametrically opposed to that of Marxism. Nations are a necessary product of man’s creation, not his alienation; Christ’s atonement principally heals the nations;143 and eschatologically the nations will preserve their nationality unto all eternity, and not lose it in a colorless communist utopia.

“God that made the world and all things therein, . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us . . but now commandeth all men every where to repent” (Acts 17.24-30).

“The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved. . – He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth. . . Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen [- the nations], I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:6-10).

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee
Communist Eschatology — pg. 773 – 774

Dr. Fancis Nigel Lee’s Apologetic For Biblical Nationalism

Of course, there is to be contact between the nations, but not supranational miscegenation or slow genocide. National seclusion is wrong, but even a supranational ecumenical movement can be guilty of seclusion! For as Dooyeweerd remarks:

“The history of the building of the tower of Babel, viewed in the light of the cultural commandment of Genesis 1, shows that seclusion and isolation in cultural development is contrary to the Divine ordinance. Cultural expansion, the spread of humanity over the surface of the earth in the differentiation of the cultural groups, and the cultural contact between these groups, have been set as a task to mankind.”114

And again: “In the removal of the rigid walls of isolation, historical development moves in the line of cultural integration. The latter has its counterpart in the process of an increasing differentiation. This process of cultural integration and differentiation should be sharply distinguished from the leveling tendencies which in our days threaten to penetrate the so-called under-developed cultures with secularized factors of Western civilization.”115

In spite of a slight amount of marginal intermixing and still less of intermarriage with other stocks, God preserved the Israelitic nation and its culture (and land and language) up to the advent of Christ.116 Neither did Christ destroy nationality but sought to preserve it and to cleanse it from sin and to perfect it. And this involved at least two things: His mandate to improve international relations, but also to sanctify national life to His glory. Christ insisted on His followers improving international relations. And this they were to do by loving their neighbors as themselves,117 yes, by loving even their hostile Samaritan neighbors.11”

Also, they were to pray for their enemies,119 even for their Roman conquerors,120 and, after Christ’s death and ascension, to go into all the world and teach all the nations, as commanded in Christ’s Great Commission.121 Yet they were also to sanctify national life and to promote specifically the national welfare. Jesus Himself clearly taught the necessity of the Israelitic believers’ ministering first to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,”122 and that it was not meet to take the Israelitic “children’s bread and cast it” to other nations.123 Nor should Samaritans be encouraged to inundate the temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, but rather worship God in their own temple in their own land, for “God is Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit,”124 that is, in one and the same spirit and not necessarily in one and the same international or supranational geographical locality. And, having assured His followers that nations would still be in existence on the future Day of Judgment,125 and that many would then come from the east and west into the kingdom of heaven,12~ He told His followers to go into all the world, and disciple all the nations121 (as nations!), beginning amongst their own nation in
Jerusalem, but going forth thence even into the hostile territory of “Samaria, and into the uttermost parts of the earth.”127

Shortly after that, the risen Christ poured out His Spirit on the day of Pentecost, causing the disciples to speak of the wonderful works of God in every then known language for the benefit of those Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Pontians, Asians, Phrygians, Pamphylians, Egyptians, Libyans, Cyrenians, Romans, Cretans, Arabians, etc., who were then in Jerusalem for the feast. Far from suggesting the future creation of a one-world nation with a one-world language, this important event certainly suggests the sanctification of the then existing nationalities to the service of God, inasmuch as “devout men, out of every nation under heaven” there heard the Gospel “every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born.”128

Nor did the Christians later lose their nationality. Even amongst the early Israelitic Christians, the Greek-speaking Israelites maintained their group consciousness vis-a-vis the Hebrew-speaking Israelites.129 Paul became a Roman to the Romans solely so that he might save some,130 but in spite of this he still remained an Israelite,131 spoke always to the Jews
first and then to the Greeks,132 and loved his people so much that he was prepared to sacrifice himself in their stead, as it were.l33 At the same time. he emphasized that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew nor barbarian nor Scythian,134 and that as the nations of the world were progressively more and more won for Christ,135 and as Christians of each nation prayed for their kings and those in authority so that Christian men may lead a quiet and peaceable life and so that all men may be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth,136” national and international relations would improve, in spite of all temporary setbacks, as the Gospel runs its course through the world of nations.137

The Cretians may be liars, evil beasts, slow bellies; the Corinthians may be factious and passionate; the Galatians may be foolish; the Thessalonians lazy; and the Israelites blinded;138 but the day is coming when Christ shall be all in all.139

For “in the last days it shall come to pass that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths; for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”140 And in the new Jerusalem on the new earth, “the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. . . – And they shall bring~thc glory and honor of the nations into it.”141

Dr. Fancis Nigel Lee
Communist Eschatology — pg. 770-772

Vult-Right

What the Vult Right is

Over time it has become painfully obvious that what is called “the Alt-Right” should be in reality called “the Alt. Left.” As such some wags have come with another alternative to the “Alt-Right” called the “Vult-Right.” The Vult-Right has the aspiration of being a genuinely conservative option to the left as expressed in movements such as Cultural Marxists, New World Order types, Progressives, Neo-conservatives, Leftist “Christianities,” multiculturalists, postmodernists, the Alt-Right, Utopians, and other assorted expressions of the Jacobin left, whether National or International in its expression.

The Vult-Right is uniquely and substantively the expression of worldview Christianity. Below is the vision of the tiny minority of those who would label themselves Vult-Right.

1.) The Vult-Right is of the right as the right is defined by Scripture. The Vult-Right assumes if one is of the left they are operating in contradiction to Biblical Christianity. The means that the Vult-Right understand themselves as distinctly Christian and as advocating for a distinctly Christian social order wherein the God of the Christian Bible is glorified.

2.) The Vult-Right serves as an option to the Alt-Right and Libertarian movements for Christians who care not to be in bed with the leftist National Socialist who comprise much of the Alt-Right and who understand that movement Libertarianism is merely the flip side of the coin of movement socialism.

3.) The Vult-Right believes that Western Civilization has been the apex of human civilization and that the heights of Western Civilization has been due to the shaping influence of Biblical Christianity, particularly the Christianity as expressed by the Reformed faith.  As such, Western Civilization has been known as “Christendom.”

4.) The Vult-Right believes that any syncretistic admixture with Biblical Christianity and Christendom means the adulterating of that unique and summit Civilization.  This means trying to reach back to golden ages such as the Rennasiance or pagan Rome or Greece are retrograde movements. This means that trying to add counsel from other religions such as Talmudic Judaism or Koranic Islam is a retrograde movement for Christendom and civilization.

5.) The Vult-Right believes in decentralization and diffused governments that stretch across Family, Church, and State.  This means any notion of “Christian Socialism” is anathema to adherents of the Vult-Right.

6.) The Vult-Right believing in decentralization and the diffuse governments also believe that regionalism in social order and Confederacy in politics are preferred expressions in a Christian world and life view. This vision is often referred to as Agrarianism, Jurisdictionalism, and Sphere Sovereignty.

7.) The Vult-Right, as it practices attackagetics in its apologetics, and as it exists in a milieu where Christianity and Christians are being asked to surrender at every turn, refuses to be on the defensive and so is seen by its enemies as unreasonable, arrogant, and triumphalistic. To the contrary, it sees itself as the only reasoned course to take, as holding out life to a dying culture, as working to end the spiral of defeat Christendom and civilization have been in since the Endarkenment.

8.) The Vult-Right rejects all Internationalism. Following the model of Scripture, it is Nationalist. This means that the Vult-Right rejects the concept of propositional nationhood. As such the Vult-Right embraces distinct borders,  distinct culture, distinct ethnicity and distinct language, and shared History as the definition of nation. This means the uniform and universal rejection by the Vult-Right of all plans for New World Order whether or not such plans are hatched by “Christians” or by pagans.

9.) The Vult-Right embraces a teleology wherein the nations of this world become the nations of the Lord Christ. As such the Vult-Right is postmillennial in its eschatology and is Missiological in its intent to see all the nations bow to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. All nationalisms will one day be Christian nationalisms.

10.) The Vult-Right embraces the nomology of God’s Law as the standard which all Nations are to use to provide a just justice in both their legal order and so in their social order. Without and apart from God’s law all Nationalisms will be vile, ugly, and inhuman.

11.) The Vult-Right rejects all ambitions of modern egalitarianism.  The Vult-Right accepts two equalities. The Vult-Right accepts that all men from every tribe, tongue, race, and nation are created as imprinted with the Imago Dei and so are equally Image bearers of the God of the Bible. The Vult-Right accepts that all men are to be equally adjudicated before God’s law in terms of justice per their stations and places wherein God has placed them.

12.) The Vult-Right embrace Biblical hierarchy and patriarchy. Children are to obey their parents in the Lord. Workers are to please their employers in the Lord. Wives are to submit to their husbands. Laymen are to honor their Elders in the Lord. Citizens are to obey their Magistrates in the Lord. Biblical hierarchy and patriarchy are the norms for all National social orders.

13.) The Vult-Right is familial-centric. The Vult-Right believes that Christian covenantalism means that the family and not the individual is the primary building block in a Christian social order.

14.) The Vult-Right believes that Theology leads to cultures (family, church, and civil-social) which in turns leads to identity which in turn leads to the social order which in turn leads to the various civil social Institutions.

15.) The Vult-Right is anti-Scientism. The Vult-Right understands that Science is only as good as the theology upon which it is built upon as a foundation. As such the Vult-Right understands that all science is always in the service of some theology. The Vult-Right embraces science as science is the consequence of Christian theology as opposed to being the consequence of some other false theology. Science is never neutral and is always the servant of some god or god concept. Theology remains the queen of the Sciences.

16.) The Vult-Right rejects all Thomistic two paths (reason and faith) to truth. The Vult-Right understands that reason can never get underway apart from faith commitments.

17.) The Vult-Right being Regionalist and Nationalist is opposed to Empire building wherein differing peoples and nations are controlled and subjugated by a “Master Race.” Consistent with this the Vult-Right is opposed to Empires seeking to amalgamate and adulterate differing people into a new “Master Race.”

18.) The Vult-Right being Nationalist is opposed to multicultural social order understanding the proximity + diversity = conflict. The Vult-Right understands that modern expressions of multiculturalism are in pursuit of a monoculturalism that amalgamates and adulterated all various peoples into one new people with one new universal culture.

19.) The Vult-Right in its opposition to multiculturalism understands that part of multiculturalism is multifaithism and multiracialism and is opposed to each since each, as in the hands of the Cultural Marxists, is in pursuit of one universal non-Christian faith and one universal non-Christian people. The Biblical Christian faith is the ultimate target of each.

20.) The Vult-Right, believing in borders, nations, and culture rejects a Libertarian International free trade that requires the International free movement of peoples across borders that International free trade brings in its wake.

21.) The Vult-Right as existing among a Christian White people favors the continuation of said Christian White people and their faith, gene-pool, cultures, customs, traditions habits, and laws as those are reflections and incarnations of God’s Law-Word. The Vult-Right expects other peoples of other Nations will have the same desire and that desire should be honored as other people’s serve under the authority of the Kingship of Jesus Christ.

22.) The Vult-Right is opposed to standing Armies and preemptive strikes. When War must be waged the Vult-Right holds that it is waged either in defense of hearth and home or in the protection of other Christian peoples under assault from pagan peoples seeking to overthrow their Christian faith and nation.

23.) The Vult-Right is opposed to the current Immavasion and Refugee and Asylum abuse understanding that this continues to be an attempt by the pagan left US Federal Government to overthrow the indigenous citizenship in favor of a more controllable people.

24.) The Vult-Right believes that the Universal Church is comprised as a Nation of Nations. Christians of every tribe, tongue, race, and nation are Spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ who retain their creational markers of ethnicity, gender, family, and clan as given by God. These creational markers glorify God and are not to be eliminated.  The New Jerusalem is inhabited not by individuals except as those individuals are present in their nations.

25.) The Vult-Right rejects both the Materialism of Marxist thought and the hatred of the corporeal as expressed in Gnostic thought. The Vult-Right embraces both nature and nurture while understanding that Grace restores nature and that regeneration reorients nurture.

A good deal of the above would be abhorrent not only to the Jacobin left but also to what is called the Alt-Right. The Vult-Right is the only expression currently that belongs to the Right.

Twin Spin From A. A. Hodge & B. L. McAtee

“Millenarian missionaries have a style of their own. Their theory affects their word in the way of making them seek exclusively, or chiefly, to conversion of individual souls. The true and efficient missionary method is, to aim directly, indeed, at soul winning, but at the same time to plant Christian institutions in heathen lands, which will, in time, develop according to the genius of the nationalities. English missionaries can never hope to convert the world directly by units.”

A. A. Hodge
19th Century American Reformed Theologian
Missionary to India

1.) Note that Hodge is faulting here, by way of implication, R2K “theology.” R2K would discipline Hodge for daring to plant “Christian Institutions,” since Institutions by definition can not be Christian per R2K.

2.) One can’t help but wonder, following A. A. Hodge’s logic whether or not all missionary efforts geared to exclusively or chiefly the converting of individual souls is, by definition, “millenarian.” A. A. Hodge’s Postmillennialism did not allow him to either accept premillennial or amillennial efforts at Missions to be considered normative.

These two observations above set the table for seeing that R2K is really nothing but a stalking horse attempting to institutionalize amillennial thinking as being equated to the Reformed position. R2K is seeking to broom postmillennialism off the Reformed ecclesiastical scene. A. A. Hodge would have had nothing to do with R2K.

3.) Hodge’s desire to plant Christian Institutions as combined with his criticism of a Missionary effort that focuses on individuals only indicates that Hodge understood that the task of the Christian church is to disciple the Nations. Modern theology, whether R2K or Reformed, in general, has become Baptistified. It is Baptist thinking that accounts for thinking only of building the church by means of individuals while missing the covenant implications of Biblical Christianity. The paedo Reformed Church you’re attending is most likely just a wet baby Baptist church. The Reformed Chruch, as R2K indicates has forgotten how to think covenantally.

4.) Hodge’s quote indicates that he understood the whole idea of the one and the many. Hodge understands the importance of the many by rightly noting that individual souls must be evangelized. However, Hodge also understands the importance of the One by insisting that the Nation as a whole must be converted and discipled via the planting of Christian Institutions among nations.

5.) Note Hodge says that the method of Missions that seeks to only evangelize individuals is doomed to failure. As most missions agencies apply just this very method it calls into question supporting those mission agencies. Is the Lord Christ honored by a missionary effort that eschews His command to convert and disciple whole Nations?

6.) Pay attention to Hodge’s respect for nations. Obviously, Hodge has no vision for a multicultural global Christian world that is absent of the distinct genius of distinct nations. This whole idea that God desires a Christian New World Order where nations are eclipsed is utter nonsense.

7.) Hodge understood that non-postmillennial eschatology does missions in a way that does not expect to convert the world. That this is true for premillennialist is seen in the fact that they do not believe that the Kingdom of Christ will come until Christ returns. Therefore nations will not be converted and so Christian Institutions are nonsense. That this is true for amillennialists (especially R2k which is merely consistent amillennialism) is seen in the fact that they believe the Kingdom of Christ is spiritual and exactly equivalent to the Church.  As such Nations, Institutions, Cultures, Families, Education, Law, etc. cannot be converted and so cannot be Christian. Hodge would have found such thinking execrable.

9.) Hodge understood that while Christian Institutions can’t convert, what Christian Institutions can do is, by God’s grace and providence, provide a contextual background against which their individual Christianity and confession can make sense.  For example, when individual converts have a law order that applies Christianity to the social order a contextual background is provided wherein their Christianity is supported. For example, when individual converts have an Education order that educates in the context of presupposing the God of the Bible then a contextual background is provided wherein their Christianity more easily makes sense.

10.) When Hodge says, “A style of their own,” he is indicating that Millenarian “thinking” creates a different kind of Christian. “A style of their own” can only arise out of a “thinking of their own,” and a “thinking of their own,” indicates a different kind of Christian. Anybody familiar with the premill vs. postmill or the amill vs. postmill debate realizes that the people holding these respective positions lean into life quite differently. Indeed, I would say that this observation is so true that differences on eschatologies make for different kinds of Christians as much as differences on soteriologies. Just as Arminians and Calvinists are different in their character and personality because of what they believe so the same is true with people who hold varying eschatologies. They are indeed each a people of their own.

8.) So we learn from this one quote, per Hodge,

a.) That premillennial missions is not Biblical
b.) That R2K “theology” is not Biblical
c.) That disrespect for nations as nations is not Biblical
d.) That Institutions can be Christian just as they can be Heathen
e.) That nations as nations are to be discipled
f.) Converting the world is our goal
g.) That the One and the Many must always be kept before us
h.) That the Western Reformed world has largely suffered Baptistification
i.) That differing eschatology makes for different kinds of Christians and so different versions of Christianity.

“The proposal of a non-religious basis (for education) is something novel not found anywhere in the experience of the past. To carry the theory out the language itself will have to be revolutionized and the dictionary itself expurgated; for its terminology, as well as that of the law of England is full of religion. And is it not a significant fact that in our great American Encyclopaedia there is no article on the word ‘God?’ If you ask how far I would advocate religious training, I reply, that the best practical system I have known was the old Scottish parochial system, though it is to be feared that, instead of getting back to that, things, as with the New England schools, are going in the opposite direction. Christianity should be recognized publicly by this country. Christ should be recognized in the law of our land as the Supreme Ruler of our nation. I am a member of a society striving for this end; the principle is right, whatever our success may be. We should insist that if the State has a right to educate she must not educate in infidel history and philosophy, but, in assuming the educator’s function, must obey the Scripture injunction regarding that function — to train the young in the ‘nurture and admonition of the Lord.'”  

A. A. Hodge (1823 – 1886)
19th Century American Reformed Theologian
Missionary to India

1.) There are whiffs of presuppositionalism in this quote by Hodge. Note how he implicitly refuses the idea of neutrality.

2.) R2K boys are advocating for something that, per Hodge, did not exist before the mid 19th century. Do you want novelty? Become R2K.

3.) Can you imagine what a storm of protest would be raised in a R2K Presbytery would be raised if a candidate for ordination up and said, “Christ should be recognized in the law of our land as the Supreme Ruler of our nation.” I shudder to contemplate it.

4.) The implication behind the insistence that “Christ should be recognized in the law of our land as the Supreme Ruler of our nation,” is that all nations are theocratic. Some God or god concept is going to be the Supreme Ruler of each nation whether lawfully recognized in a de Jure sense or recognized in a de facto sense. The whole notion, per R2K, that a nation can be a-religious and a-theocratic is nonsense, and only gains traction because of Anabaptist Roger William’s success in Rhode Island so many years ago.

Presuppositional Methodology

Bret,

“I have the humility and wisdom to avoid imposing my faith and beliefs on others. You have neither virtue. You are an absolutist.”

John Rolfe

John,

And yet here you are trying to impose your faith that all men should have a faith that allows for all kinds of faiths in the public square and further per your faith you are saying that no faith but your faith (which has a god who demands his followers to squash the impulse of other faiths to be ascendant) be ascendant. AND you are doing so absolutely. Go figure.

You’re a confused man John.

__________

Note here in this exchange,

1.) I did not allow the conversation to be carried on, on the basis of Mr. Rolfe’s presuppositions. Mr. Rolfe presupposed that he was not imposing his faith and beliefs on others when in point of fact that is exactly what he was doing. The presuppositional methodology forbids reasoning on the ground of your opponent’s presuppositions.

2.) I demonstrated that Mr. Rolfe was guilty of the very thing he was accusing me of… being an absolutist. Of course being an absolutist is inescapable. Even if one is a relativist one is an absolutist about his relativist position.

3.) We have to understand that “freedom of religion” is a myth. All social orders organize themselves under the umbrella of a singular religion. The singular religion of America is pluralism but it is a pluralism which insists that its tenets of plurality in the public square be ascendant vis-a-vis the tenets of any other religion being ascendant. So, our singular religion has the one god who says that all gods are welcome in the public square as long as none of the gods and their commands are taken more seriously than the god of pluralism and its commands. As such we are back to Rome where any god was allowed in the public square except those gods whose adherents refused to offer up incense to Caesar. In a pluralistic arrangement, it is the god who limits the other gods who is the god of the public square and it is that god’s religion that is followed in defiance of all the other religions. That god is the State in who we live and move and have our being. This is where pluralism always ends up. Pluralism is a myth.

In the end John, all faiths and belief systems are absolutist in nature. Those which feign to be absolute in their inclusion of all other faiths and beliefs are simultaneously absolute in their exclusion of Christ and His exclusive claim of Lordship and His exclusive law-order and His demand for a faith that excludes the presence of all other faiths.