Category: Apologetics

Twin Spin From Dr. P. Andrew Sandlin … More “Theology” With The Smell Of Sulfur

The young new church nazis find the Imago Dei troublesome because it reflects the unity of humanity in God’s created order: all humans are created in the image of God. That unity is a threat to white nationalism, just as white nationalism is a threat to the gospel of Jesus Christ (read Galatians). And it is more than marginally ironic that many of these same younglings that champion “nature” are at war with God’s created order.

P. Andrew “Andy” Sandlin
Theologian — A Really Bad One 

1.) If the Imago Dei stamps out white nationalism suggesting that all men are the same then it stamps out differentiation between the sexes. Andy can’t have it both ways. Either the Imago Dei allows for distinctions among peoples to exist or it requires that we lose the distinctions between men and women.

In the end, Sandlin is not arguing for unity. The idiot is arguing for uniformity. He has lost the diversity in the idea of “The One and The Many.” Sandlin is advocating for social order monism.  Sandlin might as well just find a good Unitarian church to place his membership.

2.) In the end here, Sandlin has baptized the doctrine of egalitarianism. The suggestion here is that because all men equally bear the Imago Dei therefore all men are equal in terms of abilities and predispositions. Further, Sandlin is suggesting that anyone who disagrees with his kindergarten theology is a “Nazi” (insert gasp).

Christianity has always taught that men are only equal inasmuch as they are all equally made of dirt and inasmuch as they all stand as responsible before and are obligated to God and His law and inasmuch as they all have a sin nature.

3.) Even the unity in the Christian faith that Sandlin might appeal to is squashed in terms of meaning all converted peoples are the same. Converted Urdu people will not be the same as converted Mongolian or Intuit peoples. Grace does not destroy nature but restores it. Sandlin’s appeal to “unity” because of the Imago Dei does not even work if cast in the context of converted people groups. Neither the common ground of the Imago Dei, nor the common ground of conversion drives the uniformity that Sandlin aims at. In terms of putting all this in the context of the Church even St. Paul notes that different people (and we would say peoples as well) have different gifts to bring to the body in order to help the body to excel.

4.) By denying these very real racial/ethnic distinctions Sandlin is a functional Gnostic. He does not believe in the material reality that God has created us with. He seems to think that the spiritual reality of being Imago Dei complete negates our creaturely humanness in all its variegated expressions. Have these people never read a weighty book on the Church’s first heresy called Gnosticism?

5.) Understand where all this is going for Sandlin. This appeal to the “unity” of the human race because of Imago Dei is greasing the rails for normativity of inter-racial marriages, cross-racial adoptions and multicultural “social order,” driven by saluting open borders. It is a theology hellbent on completing the destruction of a once Christian people.

Now, I’ll grant that Andy doesn’t realize the implications of his position but his inability to think consequentially does not mean what I’ve observed is any less true. At best Andy’s inability to connect dots means he’s merely stupid and not instead just plain wicked.

6.) Pray tell what is Andy going to do with me. I am no youngling and so he can’t cast that implied aspersion at me. Honestly, except for a few old timer chaps like Chambers, Mahan, and I, it is the younglings who are spot on in resisting this Nietzschean will to death that we find so prevalent among the Sandlins, Doug Wilsons, Al Mohlers, etc.

7.) Honestly, the sting of being called a “Nazi” has lost its bite. Like the accusation of “racist” it means very little to those who have eyes wide open to the Babel project. Call me a “Nazi?” Shrug … it’s like calling me a “edofix.” It means nothing to me.  I know in your world Andy it is the greatest insult you can find but those who have gotten past the post-war liberal consensus just don’t give a rat’s arse about your slurs.

“It is just as erroneous — and pernicious — to equate culture with race as it is to equate intelligence with race. Culture’s characteristics are shaped by religion, not by race, easily proven by the fact that virtually all races have at different times and locations reflected godly religion and its wholesome characteristics, as well as ungodly religion and its unwholesome characteristics.

The issue is always religion, never race.”
P. Andrew “Andy” Sandlin
Theologian — A Really Bad One

1.) I don’t know of anybody within the Ogden Utah group, among the Kinists I hang with, among the Natural Law Nationalist who try to equate culture with race as if there is a one to one correspondence.

2.) However, there is an understanding among many that race is a contributory factor to culture along with race. Indeed, a good definition of culture is theology poured over ethnicity. To deny that genetics have anything to do with culture, and arguing instead that all culture is, is what goes on between someone’s ears is to, once again, profess allegiance to a Gnostic faith. Scripture teaches “as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is,” but notice that there is a man who is thinking here and that thinking man is the repository of generations of genetics. The material/corporeal is real people. God’s grace does not make who we are in our creaturely genetics disappear.

3.) To argue like Andy does here (and it’s not just Andy of the Boomer Evangelicals who are arguing in this fashion) leaves one arguing that nature means nothing in the nurture vs. nature debate. Sanlindism looks to mean that if men can just be programmed to believe the right things then nature means nothing. Again … Gnosticism.

4.) I think it is disputable that all ethnicities at one time or another have embraced Christianity to such a degree that whole civilizations were built. However, for the sake of argument let us grant Sandlin’s premise. Is he really trying to argue that a Pygmy Christian culture is going to look the same as a Japanese Christian culture or a Hottentot Christian culture? It is mind-boggling to think that the man might actually be arguing something like this.

5.) Of course race alone is not equated to culture… but neither can it be said that religion alone is equated to culture. Culture is the interplay between religion and genetics — between theology and who God created us to be in all of our corporeality. Culture is the outward manifestation of a peoples’ inward beliefs. However, as different peoples are, well, different, then even if different peoples’ embrace the same theology there cultures will not be or look the same. A Christian Peruvian people are never going to look the same as a Christian Ndebele people are never going to look the same as a Christian Cornish people. To think otherwise puts one on the wrong side of Babel.

6.) St. Paul destroys Sandlinism when he talks about the particular besetting of the Crete people. All peoples do not look the same in their rebellion against God and His Christ. Different peoples will express their fallenness each in their own unique way as peculiar to their own people group.

I am a postmillennialist and so I know that the ideas of these chaps will be put down. Still, I pray that God might be gracious to them before they die and grant them repentance. I have no doubt that they may well be Brothers but even as Paul had stern words at times for Brothers so stern words are required here.

Bret Chit Chats With David The Roman Catholic

David, the Roman Catholic Dude writes me;

Jesus became human did he not?

To the extent that I depend on human works for my salvation, I do so because they are the works of Jesus Christ himself.

Bret Responds,

That’s a nice sentiment David but let’s examine it a bit before we swallow it shall we. Now, remember, this is your response to my insistence that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. You objected to that by mocking the Protestants who believe in faith alone. When I noted that Scripture clearly disallows our works as contributory to our justification you responded with the above.

So, I take this as an affirmation of yours that human works are necessary for salvation. Indeed, you say you are even “depending on them,” but that’s OK because “they are the works of  Jesus Christ Himself.”

Now, while it is true that God’s people are, as Titus 2:14 teaches, always zealous for good works, and while we affirm Ephesians 2:10

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

We also affirm that our right standing and acceptability with God is solely on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ reckoned to me and received by faith alone that is characterized as completely resting in Christ and His righteousness.

But, now you want to insert our works claiming that our works are the works of Jesus. This is large scale typical hubris on the part of Roman Catholics. David, do you really think any of your works (even if you think that they are the works of Jesus through you) can meet the standard for what God finds acceptable as a work? Are your good works absolutely Holy? Are your good works without any blemish or fault? This is what is required in order for your works righteousness to be accepted by God. We Protestants understand that by that standard all of our righteousness is like filthy rags. Yet, here we find a Roman Catholic, proudly declaring that to whatever extent he is depending on his works it is ok because his works are so exalted that his works are as acceptable as our saviors works.

Allow me to suggest David, that given this view of yours, you have not yet seen either God’s holiness or your sinfulness and as a result you do not understand your need for Christ’s death. I trust that in time the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to the foolishness of thinking that your works are acceptable before a thrice Holy God because, after all, your works have all the sanctity and acceptability of the works of the savior Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholic David writes,

To a Protestant Jesus is just an idea. Yes, you have faith. But even the demons believe God and tremble.

Bret responds,

Just an idea?

Nobody puts up with the persecution that the Roman Catholics visited upon the Protestants for “just an idea,” David. Nobody is martyred for an idea David. This statement is just Roman Catholic bloviating.

And while I don’t doubt that many Protestants have demon faith, I am more sure that even more Roman Catholics have demon faith. Indeed, there is not one Roman Catholic who is epistemologically self-conscious about what they believe who aren’t involved in demon faith. Your embrace of Trent, by itself, means that you are involved in demon faith.

David the Roman Catholic writes,

You never actually unite with him. That’s the real reason you reject his body and blood, and have no life within you.

Bret responds,

And yet David, the Scripture testifies that the Holy Spirit unites believers to Christ. The Holy Spirit, by whom Christ offered Himself without spot to God (Hebrews 9:14), regenerates the elect when He unites them to Christ. By this vital spiritual union, God brings the elect from spiritual death to spiritual life (Romans 5:6).

Protestants don’t reject the body and blood of Christ. We merely reject the demonic Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. We are done with Priestcraft and the attempt of the Babylon Church to have complete sovereign control over who is and isn’t saved, which the evil doctrine of transubstantiation teaches.

Will you not repent David and cease with your reliance on the apostate magisterial Church for salvation and instead trust in Christ for your salvation with the Church as His faithful minister?

David the Roman Catholic writes,

It is the legacy of Luther’s poor self worth, sadly. He never really believed in sanctification. A Christian to him was nothing better than a ball of dung covered in a little bit of snow.

Bret responds,

David, the most sanctified Christian believes of himself that he is a “unprofitable servant who has only done what he ought.”

So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Luke 17:10)

The Protestant understands, David, that all our righteousness is in Christ alone and so we don’t spend much time thinking about ourselves. If we did spend much time thinking about ourselves we would understand that there is very little snow covering us as dung.

We do believe in sanctification David. We just understand that our only hope is not based on our own very real ongoing personal renewal but our only hope is found in Jesus Christ and His righteousness.

Won’t you join us and find your only hope in Jesus Christ and His righteousness?

David the Roman Catholic writes,

Jesus really does want to save you through and through. He made provision for a whole lifetime of grace. It’s not just some one-saved prayer that you prayed once when you were seven.

Bret responds,

Yes, I quite agree, that Jesus does save His people through and through. We are indeed saved to the uttermost and never fail of the salvation that is given in Christ. We know that because our Lord Christ said, “All that come to me I will in no wise cast out.”

We likewise believe that the triune God has made a provision for a whole lifetime of grace. Indeed, we even believe that Word and Sacrament are the means of grace — the way in which God conveys His grace to His “at the same time sinner, the same time saint” people.

We historic Protestants are not apologetic about our belief that the prayer of repentance is normatively consistent with the context of salvation, and that regardless the age of the one praying. However, we don’t believe that the prayer is magic or that the prayer makes the reality. We understand that a seven year old praying that prayer is the result of that seven year old being regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit in the context of the Word preached.

And we will teach that protestant child who prayed that prayer that throughout their life they have need to attend Word and Sacrament in order to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. We will also teach them that the sacraments of the Roman Catholic church are blasphemies that empty the Cross of its power since it denies the “once forever” work of Jesus Christ on the cross and replaces that finished work with a insistence that Jesus has to be continually and perpetually sacrificed in the Mass so that salvation can be obtained.

David the Roman Catholic writes,

Jesus’ provision is the Eucharist, the true bread from heaven that give flesh for the life of the world. You can lie to yourself, but John 6 does not lie.

Bret responds,

I am not lying to myself David. Like all Protestants I believe that Word and Sacrament are means of Grace. I simply don’t believe, because of the teaching of Scripture, that Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross was insufficient for all time. As we read in Hebrews 10;

11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

A Response to Dimitry Wilsoneyev On Pulling Down Criminal Statues

“In such a moment, our task should be two-fold. First, don’t help them tear down anything else. I don’t care if it is a statue of Cecil Rhodes, or Winston Churchill, or Nathan Bedford Forrest—nothing else comes down.”

Doug Wilson

Imagine you’re living in 1990 Communist Russia. Finally, there is a crack in Communism and you and the boys decide you’re going to pull down a few statues of Commie heroes — Oh, let’s say a Trotsky statue or an Iron Felix statue or even a lowly Brezhnev statue. Change is in the air and you are determined that you’re going to cast off the “heroes” of the past.

But then comes Dimitry Wilsoneyev who warns you about all the social instability you’re going to create if you tear down statues — even if the statues you’re going to tear down are statues of mass murderers and criminal villains.

Of course your immediate response is…. “What the hell have we been living under for the last 80 years if not ever incrementally increasing social instability as created by those raised up for posterity in statue form?”

But Dimitry Wilsoneyev, good Christian that he is, reminds you that by pulling down these statues that you may well be letting loose anarchy upon the land.

Again, you stare unblinkingly at this Boomer. You’re bumfuzzled and are thinking, “You prefer this four score tyranny instead? You want to say to Dimitry, ” Even if you’re right about social instability and anarchy being set loose by tearing down statues of criminals and delinquents is that worse than what we lived under during the reign of these madmen? A reign that will continue and even increase if we don’t change the equation. Keep in mind Dimitry, that those supporting the maintenance of these statues we want to pull down are intent on continuing this criminally aberrant social order. Further, Dimitry, you’re counsel to go slow is serving to the end of supporting those that would turn the whole world into one vast gulag.”

“Think about it Dimitry …. if Cromwell had listened to your kind of counsel England would have never been set free from the villain Charles I. If the Colonials had listened to you we would still be quartering Red Coat soldiers in our homes. And if Europe had listened to your kind of counsel in 1989 the Berlin Wall would still be standing.”

“The problem honorable Dimitry Wilsoneyev is not that the idols erected to Churchill, Lincoln, or FDR are being torn down. The problem is that they were ever raised up to begin with.” Also, dear Dimitry, we need to ask, “what are we to do while living in already socially unstable times that find us having to barricade our homes against those who are ginning up the teeming crowds of refuse and delinquency to the end that someday statues of their vomitous likeness will be erected?

Sorry, Dimitry, but we are well past the exit that said “waiting will fix things.” Any counsel to people that in effect says… “it’s ok, go back to sleep,” is not going to cut it for people who love God, their family, and their people. Some statues / idols have to go, Dimitry and there is no time like the present.

Winston Churchill is one of them.

Won’t you help us tear down the old idols and statues of the post-war liberal consensus — even in the context when the enemy is out there pulling down the statues of genuine heroes?

Finally, Dimitry Wilsoneyev, social change is seldom without convulsions. Read an old book on Oliver Cromwell and learn that again.

Kinism & Its Fight Against the Gnostic Empire That Is The Reformed Church; McAtee Contra Leon

As most readers of Iron Ink know I have had a long running contest with most (not all) of the clergy in the Reformed world on the issue of their incipient Gnosticism. Usually, this contesting comes in the context of Kinism which is merely just historic traditional Christianity. However, because the Reformed Church has become so ridden with the Gnostic impulse in this country we have to give an aspect of basic Christianity a defining word of its own. That word is Kinism.

I must say, probably to my shame, that I have become very impatient with the attacks on Kinism from the Reformed clergy, if only because after 20 years of me dealing with this subject it seems these people are impervious to not only learning but even to hearing what I, and others, have been saying. I mean this material is so simple that even a toddler can understand and yet we find men trained in seminary — their numbers being legion — continuing to say the stupidest of things such as we find most recently from Rev. Aldo Leon.

The good Rev. wrote, amidst other banalities that fell from his fingertips on the subject;

“What do R2K and Kinists have in common?

And then answered his own question;

A.) They both are resistant to Christians being the societal X factor and in different ways defer to some primacy of nature.”

Rev. Aldo “Gnostic” Leon

 

First one asks,

What does societal X factor even mean?

I can only guess it means something like … “That factor in Christians which is supposed to make them different from everyone else.”

If that is accurate then what Rev. Leon is arguing is that because Kinists do not believe that grace destroys nature that therefore they fail the necessary X factor.

The whole quote belies the fact that Rev. Leon has been bitten by the Gnostic bug that has bitten so many Reformed clergy today who ignorantly rail against Kinism.

The first and most resilient heresy the Church faced and continues to face is Gnosticism, which in part, is the insistence that the corporeal is evil. The fight against Gnosticism is found in the New Testament (Colossians, I John) and was an opponent of some of the Early Church Fathers. One well known
was a chap named Cerinthus. One day the Apostle John was bathing in a community wash center and while there St. John discovered that the Gnostic Cerinthus had entered into the public washing centered. Irenaeus records for us St. John’s reaction to the presence of this Gnostic,” John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, ‘Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.'”

Gnosticism was a problem in the early Church and it has been a ongoing plague to the Church ever since.

Because the Gnostics considered the corporeal/material to be evil one of two responses were seen in the Church when it was infected with Gnosticism. The first was the response of denying to the body any and all pleasure often inflicting the body with pain because it was evil. The second response was that since the body was evil and since it couldn’t be escaped then it didn’t matter what someone did with the body. This led to all kinds of drunkenness, sexual deviance, and riotous living.

Today the Church continues to deal with the Gnostic impulse as is seen in the vituperation of the doctrine of Kinism. Kinism acknowledges the reality of the corporeal realm and insists that God delights in the differing races/ethnicities that He created. However the Gnostic Church with its Gnostic clergy come along and insist that the corporeal/material reality created and controlled by God as found in our human genetic constitution is a reality that can be undone when someone asks Jesus into their heart. Upon conversion we find our modernistic Reformed clergy effectively asserting that the material/corporeal reality vanishes. All the evil material genetic coding that is ours by way of creation is destroyed by Grace and we now are merely spiritual beings who need not be concerned with racial/ethnic realities. Before Christ we are racial/ethnic beings but upon conversion the Holy Spirit takes away our DNA and gives us a spiritual being-ness that transcends race/ethnicity.

This is nothing but the Gnostic Empire striking back at the Christian assertion that creation is a positive good that ought to be embraced.

Anybody who anathematizes Kinism is a Gnostic.

Continuing  with this commentary on Rev. Leon’s jejune assertions we note;

1.) Contrary to Leon, merely recognizing nature is not to defer to “some primacy of nature” as if God as creator is not over nature or does not continue to deign, as creator to name all the corporeal realm He created as “very good” — including the genetic reality of race/ethnicity.

2.) We ask Rev. Leon, if someone has parents who have red hair and they themselves as the child of those parents likewise has red hair is that deferring to some primacy of nature?   Does Jesus take away someone’s red hair if and when they ask Jesus into their hearts? If not, why would we think that race/ethnicity goes away or becomes completely irrelevant upon conversion?

Really, we say again, anybody who anathematizes Kinism is a Gnostic.

Remember folks what the Reformed cognoscenti like Rev. Leon has forgotten… “Grace does not destroy nature. Grace restores nature.” Because that is true, when man is visited by God’s grace that grace does not destroy the reality or significance of race/ethnicity but rather restores it to be what it was always intended to be by God’s creative act.

My frustration find me grasping for words to communicate how dumb this kind of Gnosticism is and that especially when found those who are supposed to be the ones who are holding forth the light of truth for God’s assembly. That’s my analysis. I end this piece by quoting a couple of my Christian friends as they commented on this piece of torpidity as coming from Rev. Leon’s fingertips.

“Nature and grace. God is the source and author of both. This nit wit is asserting that nature has some existence independent of its creator or at least in his rejection of Kinism suggests that grace obliterates God created racial distinctions rather than enabling unity between those distinctions.

He’s (Rev. Leon) stupid. ”

Mark Chambers 

“It never ceases to amaze me all the convoluted gibberish these guys get up to in aims of denying the obvious. Nature is a means of God. In fact, ‘nature’ encompasses all means in general. And the Reformed have always held that God works through means because He is their author who declared them good from the beginning, and worketh all things according to His will and to the good of those who love Him. Nature therefore cannot be anathematized without inditing God Himself.

But the Gnostics of our day see themselves as something wholly apart from nature and God’s means. They seem to adopt a vague theory of theosis in which they transcend matter and means into identity with God Himself. Which really makes it another permutation of the devil’s primordial offer for man to be as God.”

Dan Brannan

In the end the humor in all this is that Rev. Leon, who apparently is writing a book against R2K “theology” is the one who shares common ground with the very thing he is writing against. By railing against Kinism the good Reverend is covered with the same dank smell of Gnosticism that so completely perfumes R2K theology.

What can I say?

It is a mad mad mad mad world.