Apologetics – Page 69

Theology & The University

“War is the continuation of politics by other means.”

General Carl Von Clausewitz
German war theoretician

As RJR notes in the quote below the same is true of Theology and all other disciplines. Every other discipline that can be named among the Humanities is just the continuation of theology by other means. This is why Theology was once understood to be the Queen of the Sciences. Our forbears understood that conclusions arrived at in the other humanities were only as good as the theology from which they were drawing.

Indeed, this understanding of Theology as the “Queen of the Sciences” is where we get our whole idea of “University.” The word “University” etymologically derives from the idea of “the whole,” or “the aggregate.” The idea was, in the midst of the various multifaceted disciplines offered and studied at a University there was a “Uni” that bound all the disciplines together. That “Uni” in “University” is Theology. Without theology as “Queen of the Sciences,” one no longer has a “University” but only a “Multiversity.”

The fact that we have given up Christian theology as “The Queen of the Sciences” goes a long way towards explaining the irrational age which we inhabit. Since we have no unifying glue to hold us together all that is left is the bizarre and the irrational.

Consider also, how modern Western man’s habit of compartmentalized thinking also is derivative of the refusal to have Christian theology be the “Queen of the Sciences.” Modern man is schizophrenic. He is a centripetal being. There is nothing that keeps him from the most strange and queer contradictions in his life. For example, modern man will, at one and the same time, espouse evolution and then turn around and attend church on Sunday. Modern man will complain about the Government and then keep on voting as if his vote will change what it has not changed for over a century. Modern man will see the modern woman for the feminist being she currently is and yet will still propose marriage. Modern man is a contradictory mess and that is largely accounted for, by the fact that he refuses to take Christian theology as the “Queen of the Sciences.”

What is interesting, though despite all the above being true, is that theology is an inescapable category, which means, that when man flushes Christian theology as the “Uni” in his “University” he doesn’t by doing so get rid of theology. Instead, he embraces something else has his theology. Marxists embrace Economics as their theology. Many moderns embrace “Science” as their theology, not realizing that that Science is only as good as the theology it is pinned upon. Cultural Marxists have, perhaps more insightfully than the rest, chosen culture as their theology. (More insightfully, I offer, because of the tight nexus that exists between culture and theology.) The point is that one never completely evacuates some kind of theology as the adhesive that is the sticking agency for something that passes as a pastiche of coherence for all the particulars.

As an aside all of this underscores again why R2K is such a stupid incoherent theology, arguing as it does, that there is no such thing as Christian law, or Christian Education, or Christian culture, etc. R2K strips Christianity of its fixative social order functioning and replaces it with the irrationality of a social order based on a “natural theology” that has only successfully existed when Christianity has dominated the culture.

Sociology, Literature, Psychology, Anthropology, Economics, Law, … all of it is just so much the continuation of theology by other means. If and when people ever come to grips with that truth, it will make conversation a good deal easier.

We end with the great Rushdoony making the same point.

“An abstract theology is only formally or technically systematic. Systematic theology must of necessity deny because God is sovereign, that there are any neutral facts or any areas of neutrality. All factuality is God-created and God-governed and interpreted. All facts are therefore theological facts, and every area of life, thought, study, and action is a theological concern.

Education, politics, science, the arts, the vocations, the family, and all things else, are theological concerns. A theology which does not involve itself in every area in terms of the sovereign God and His infallible law-word cannot be systematic: it is only abstract.”

When the Alt. Right Becomes the Alt. Left

1.) I’m starting to believe in reincarnation. I think Spencer was Ernst Rohm in a previous life.

2.) Hail Trump… Hail our People … Hail Victory

Sounds a great deal like,

Heil Hitler … Heil the Aryan race … Heil the Deutschland.

Hail Hydra anyone?

3.) When Spencer glorifies whites, he is doing so in the context of a Christless presupposition. Glorifying White people apart from Christ is “raceolatry,” and is to be repudiated at every turn. I heard Spencer speak once and was able to query him afterward. When asking about Christ and nationalism he explicitly said he was not interested in embracing a distinct religion for his nationalism. He wanted a “big tent.” At that point I knew what he was promoting would be an utter failure. Spencer and the alt. Left is Anti-Christ. The attempt to rebuild Western Civilization and Christendom apart from the Kingship of Christ is like attempting to make Beef briscut without the Beef.

4.) Spencer mentions to his audience, “we are children of the sun.” A branch of the Hitler Youth was the Deutsche Arbeiter Jugend – HJ (German Worker Youth – HY). This organization the Hitler Youth was a training ground for future labor leaders and technicians. Its symbol was a rising sun with a swastika.

5.) The Internationalist Leftist Press (Communist) have created the Nationalist Leftist movement (Alt. Left – Socialist). Spencer’s complaint about the “Lugenpress” is the “Lugenpress’s” own fault. As far back as the 1971 publication of Edith Efron’s “The News Twisters,” the Lugenpress has been deceiving, practicing disingenuousness, providing propaganda, and have been bald face lying with ink bought by the barrel.

6.) Having said all that about our “Lugenpress” Spencer seeks to turn these propagandists and liars into sub-humanoids with his comment,

“Indeed one wonders if they are people at all, or instead soulless golems animated by some dark power…”

Spencer here, as the enemy of all Christian men, is practicing the heart of objectifying the enemy and the results of such craft is always to the end of being able to hate without pangs of conscience those who have been turned into evil incarnate. This is routinely done throughout history. Americans did it to the Japanese in WW II by referring to them as “Japs” and by referring to Germans as “Huns.” The enemy can be defeated without turning them into non-humans. The Ukranian Christian Kulaks were turned into non-humans. The Bourgeoise were turned into non-humans. They Gypsies were turned into non-humans. The unborn child as been turned into non-human. Recently, there has been the attempt to turn WASP’s into non-humans. Spencer is following in that ideological train and it is a train that no Christian should desire to be on.

7.) I’ve been saying for quite some time now that the snap back that would attend the internationalist left’s program over the last century was going to be ugly. That snap back has created the pagan Nationalist left. Biblical Christians better realize, and that right quick, that Christianity cannot be reinterpreted through either the grid of Internationalist Cultural Marxism nor the grid of pagan Nationalist Marxism. We need to busy ourselves pointing out the common ground of each of these putative extremes as well as how each of the two is in rebellion to King Christ and His Law-Word.

8.) Having said all that, we must realize that the Mainstream Media’s (MM) head popping over this video is hypocritical to the extreme. Where was the MM head popping over the same radical extremism of “Black Lives Matter,” or “The New Black Panthers?” Where has been the MM head popping over La Raza or over the Southern Poverty Law Center, or the pronouncements of the Council of American – Islamic Relations? True, Spencer is ugly over the top but we’ve been living with “ugly over the top” for quite some time now and nobody in the MM has had a cow over that.

9.) So, after years of the pagan Black Lives Matter and of the pagan La Raza and of the pagan CAIR, and of the pagan ADL, a pagan White organization (Alt. Left) arises and people are surprised? None of these people or organizations are the Biblical Christian’s friends. Their respective news agencies are all propaganda tools. Their crummy salutes — whether the raised black clenched fist or the white, palm opened outward, salute — have anything to do with the sign of the Cross.

10.) Just as the Apostle Paul in Romans 9:3f I love Christ and so I love my family, and so I love my people and so I love the stranger and the alien. Each of these outward concentric loves all in their proper place. Those loves compel me to warn against any “love” that lifts race — whether the preferred blender race of the Internationalist Cultural Marxist leftist, or the preferred Christless Aryan Race of the National Socialist leftist — above Christ. One cannot love their people apart from loving them as Christ as King.

We live in strange times. We should be aware of all the various ways we can fall into error.

A Brief Primer On Cultural Marxist’s Usage Of “Racist”

Concerning the pejorative “racist,” or “racism.”

All can concede that if racism was hating someone based upon the color of their skin that would be hatred and sin.

However, in the current cultural milieu where the words “racism” and “racist” have gained so much traction, we do not find that simple of a definition. Instead what we get in terms of definition of racism is “prejudice plus power.” This is why many people insist that it is not possible for minorities to be “racists” or to practice “racism” because, so the argument goes, minorities, while perhaps having “prejudice” certainly do not have “power.” Hence it is impossible, so the argument goes, for minorities to be “racist” or to practice “racism.”

The irony of a definition of “racist” or “racism” that has as its substance, “prejudice plus power,” is inherently ironic because in such a definition the only people who can be guilty of practicing “racism” or of being “racist” are white people since, as the argument goes, only white people have prejudice as combined with power. So, we see, the cultural Marxist definition of racism is racist. Not only is the charge “racism” or “racist” racist it is a tautology.

Just as “bald people have no hair” is a redundancy so “White people are racist” is a redundancy. In Cultural Marxist speak it goes something like this,

Q.) Who are the racists?

A.) White people.

Q.)Who are white people?

A.) They are the racists.

Hard baked into the word “racist” or “racism,” as used by the modern cultural Marxist and churchmen (is there any difference?) is the presuppositional reality that the accuser himself, is the racist. He has a prejudice against white people and the use of the word itself is a power play. Prejudice plus power. The usage of that word against somebody else involves the one using the word in a contradiction of the most startling sort.

But hey … who cares about being in contradiction anymore? After all, rationality is so over-rated.

Symbol Change

^{Judges 6:5}That night the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it ²⁶and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order.

Studying the book of Judges right now and in Judges we see how unfaithful Israel had built altars to Baal as opposed to previous generations who had erected altars to “I AM” thus communicating who the people and the land were being given over to. I was struck with the importance of those altars as symbols and declarations of ownership.

When we tear down old symbols and replace them with new symbols we are, like the Israelites of old, giving ourselves, our children and our land over to different gods. The tearing down of a flag or a monument and the raising of a new flag or new monument is a significant happening. What you are witnessing is the gods being changed out.

In the last 100 years, we have seen quite a bit of this. When you do any reading on the fall of Czarist Russia and the rise of Communism you note that the Communist went whole hog on this very point. They not only tore down Churches. The Communists changed those Churches usage from houses of worship to places where pigs were housed. The Communists changed the Churches from places where the soul could find relief to latrines where a different kind of relief was found. The Communists after the revolution went on a rampage tearing down old symbols and erecting new ones. Out with the old God. In with the new gods.

When the Soviet Union fell the process was reversed. I clearly remember many scenes of statues of Stalin and Lenin being pulled down by cranes. When “Desert Storm” was finished one of the clearest images of victory was the pulling down of a statue of Saddam Hussein. Out with the old god. In with the new gods.

Now in our country, we have been experiencing the very same thing. First, it was the Confederate flag desecrated and hidden away. Recently, I read a longish piece on how it is the Gadsen flag that has been determined as “racist” and no longer can be tolerated in the public square. Statuary of our ancestors is being removed in favor of the ancestors of an alien and strange people. Out with Christianity. In with the new gods.

Whenever you find this happening you are witnessing a religious attack on the people. Where this religious attack is successful you are witnessing a people being conquered. In the book of Judges, the people had been conquered by Baal as witnessed by all those new altars built to Baal. In Czarist Russia the Christian Russians had been conquered by the Jewish Bolsheviks as witnessed by removal of their Christian Churches. Today White Western Christians are being conquered by the enemies of Christ and the evidence of that is the removal of our symbols in favor of the symbols of our enemies.

The old West — The West of Christendom — is under siege and most Christians aren’t even aware that they and their undoubted catholic Christian faith is under attack.

Examining Rev. Dr. Jim Cassidy’s “Racial Supremacy and The Gospel” Sermon (III)

“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

“Now this is not something special for the Javanese , but stems from a general rule . The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood and soul, and they do not always remain the same , but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different , as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races , countries and traditions can not be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”

Abraham Kuyper
‘Common Grace’ III XXXII

RDC sermonized,

“The good that is given to each culture comes by the undeserved blessing of God. The bad, of course, comes only from sin and to the curse.

Now, it is true that we can say that some Nationalities have produced some aspects of culture that are superior to others. There are (not that the race is superior, not that a particular ethnicity is superior) we can say, we have to rightly acknowledge that there are some aspects of culture that some Nationalities have excelled at advancing.

For example, think of the Germans. The Germans are known to have made a better car than the Irish. But the Irish are known for making better whiskey than the Germans. Fair enough. But see we also have to keep in mind on the negative side that the Irish drink way too much of their whiskey and the Germans drive their cars way too fast. Alright? So you’ve got good and you’ve got bad. But be that as it may, before the eyes of God — and this is the point — all Nationalities, all races stand condemned and each and every one of these races are totally depraved. You see sin becomes the great leveler of humanity. It’s not like we can find a race in the world that is morally superior to another, that is perhaps only 90% depraved, or that we can find a race of Ethnicity in the world that is only 70% depraved. No, all the people of all the nations are 100% depraved. That is what our doctrine of total depravity teaches us.”

Bret responds,

I am confident that RDC is mishandling total depravity.

When Calvinists speak of humans as “totally depraved,” they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality — his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. So, total depravity is extensive, not intensive. Not all total depravity looks the same. People and / or Nations can remain totally depraved and still be morally superior to other people and / or Nations who are also totally depraved. Total depravity does not mean that everyone is equally depraved, in the sense that everyone is as equally wicked as they could possibly be. Total depravity most certainly is not the moral leveler that RDC contends. People and / or Nations who are totally depraved can be morally superior though that moral superiority lends no salvific aid.

Dr. Loraine Boettner put it this way,

This doctrine of Total Inability, which declares that men are dead in sin, does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that any one is entirely destitute of virtue … What it does mean is that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive.

Further, God’s common grace can be more abundant to one people group than another people group so that the former group is indeed morally superior than the latter group. That common grace, in the end, makes the former group more ripe for judgment but total depravity does not make all men, cultures, or races, functionally or morally equal. Who would ever contend that the cannibal Korowai tribe from Indonesian New Guinea is on the same moral level as Victorian England? Yet, outside of Christ Victorian England perishes in its sins as much as the Korowai tribe does.

Now certainly when it comes to salvation sin levels us all in the sense that it makes all, outside of Christ, fit only for hell. However, total depravity does not mean that all people, nations, and cultures are equally functionally wicked.

RDC wrote,

“Now that doesn’t mean that any given people or any given nation is as depraved as it can be by God’s restraining grace. We know that sin is held in check but sin nevertheless does reign in each of us extensively. So where then could be our boasting? Sin becomes the great leveler of humanity.”

Bret responds,

I quite agree that any boasting of any superiority, as if that superiority is not all of grace, is an indictment writ against the one doing the boasting.

RDC writes,

“Sin is the great equalizer. We are all 100% depraved. What kind of deep-seated arrogance then, what kind of deep seated pride does it take to think that we, or our particular ethnicity, or our particular culture, or our particular language (whatever it is) is superior to another? You see sin, being the great leveler, renders all men under sin…. We are all equally depraved.”

Bret responds

The fact that all unregenerate peoples are depraved and so equally, spiritually shut out from God does not translate into all Nations are functionally equal. Japanese culture, as one example, is certainly superior to the Bush Men culture of Irian Jaya. Now, as outside of Christ, they are equal in being without God and without hope but that is not the same thing as saying that because of sin they are leveled in terms of ethnicity, race, or culture so that one is not superior to another.

RDC’s reasoning seems to make total depravity the handmaiden of cultural relativism. Total depravity, per RDC, is the great leveler of race, nations, and culture, therefore, no culture is superior or inferior to any other culture. The Reformed doctrine of total depravity does not teach functional egalitarianism.

There seems also to be a kind of double speak here again. On the one hand, sin is the great leveler, but on the other hand, earlier RDC admits that the Irish can be superior in making whiskey. The confusion here may be found in the fact that RDC keeps jumping the shark on categories. It is true that spiritually speaking all unregenerate people stand condemned before God but then there are times RDC wants to apply that category broadly so as to say, “therefore there is no functional superiority in terms of race, ethnicity, nations, cultures or languages.”

RDC sermonizes,

“The Gospel is also a great equalizer…. The Gospel teaches us that Christians especially must never regard themselves as …. superior over others. That is because the Gospel teaches us that was rent asunder at Babel has now been brought together and healed. What is more, since the Gospel means that God is the one who saved us, then we Christians stand on the same footing with one another before God, for we stand on Jesus Christ and in this sense there is equality…..”

Bret Responds,

Yes, we are equally saved by grace alone in Christ but that does not mean that are races or ethnicities are functionally equal. This would be to teach cultural or racial relativism. Cassidy has confused categories here. He wants to make a Redemptive equality of outcome in terms of any people and / or person looking to Christ to translate into a Creation equality of outcome in terms of culture and / or race. This is a category confusion. Many are the people that have come in from comparatively backward cultures and who will be in the New Jerusalem but that doesn’t mean their comparatively backward cultures, in the present, are equal to other clearly superior cultures.

RDC is correct when he says, in that last sentence above, “in this sense there is equality.” If he had stuck to the idea that Paul presents in Galatians 3:28f that temporal position or status doesn’t advantage or disadvantage one in terms of Redemption he would have been fine but RDC constantly wanders from that wonderful truth and seeks to apply it into functional realities.

Because RDC has muddied the waters earlier it makes his statement about “the Gospel being the great equalizer,” suspicious, if only because historically it has been the Anabaptists who were known as thoroughgoing socio-cultural “levelers” and “equalizers.” Historically the Anabaptists have believed that Jesus Christ is our great High Priest and Chief Leveler. Historically, the Reformed have always spoken out against Anabaptist socio-cultural levelers and equalizers.

And RDC is wrong about Christians never thinking themselves superior. Clearly St. Paul is making the case of his superiority of the more inferior false Apostles in II Corinthians 11. Now, Paul thinks it is folly that he is forced to do so, but there is no doubt that he is making a necessary case for his superiority in that passage.

The fact that Babel has not been brought together and healed the way the RDC thinks has been dealt with earlier, but I will note again here that all those nations walking around in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21-22) testify that the Church is a nation of nations and not Babel restored.

RDC wrote,

“God forbids that we would segregate in the Church. Peter tried that and Paul was very upset about it. We do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality. Ethnic churches while in one sense understandable are far from ideal. What is glorious however is when we see the people of God gather for worship and we see among the people of God many nations represented in her midst. That is Pentecost.”

Bret,

1.) In Galatians., Paul was the one in favor of segregating in the Church. The Judaizers and Peter were arguing that in order to be justified one had to become a soci0-cultural Jew and keep the same laws. Paul, on the other hand, was reasoning that one could remain an ethnocultural Gentile and still be Christian. The Judaizers and Peter were the ones trying to force an integrated uniformitarian Church and Paul resisted them to their face and insisted that one could have a Gentile diet and be justified … Gentiles could be segregated and have their own Church. (see also Acts 15)

2.) Quotes that contradict RDC’s claim that “we do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality;

a.) (See opening quote by Abraham Kuyper)

b.) “Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

c.) “As a matter of fact, the early church was segregated. First of all, in New Testament times it was segregated between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers. And there was… a good reason for that. The Jewish believers were so far superior that to integrate the two would have meant more often confusion. And when you realize that in, say the Corinthian church, they didn’t even know that fornication or adultery was a sin because in the Greek world there was nothing wrong with that. After all the chambers of commerce in Greece and Corinth and elsewhere… in Corinth, the chambers of commerce maintained regularly around two thousand prostitutes for all visiting businessmen. It was a manufacturing town and so on… and no one thought there was anything immoral about that. Or about men having relations with prostitutes. This was all taken for granted. So in the Gentile churches, the moral standard was pretty low. It was a lot of hard work for a couple of generations and more to bring them up to any kind of standard. Well, the Jewish congregations represented a far higher moral standard and Paul saw nothing wrong with that, nor did any other apostle. So the principle of segregation was present there from the beginning.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Audio – On Segregation

God does not forbid segregating in the Church.