Dr. Peter Jones’ Oneism vs. Twoism

“This Utopian vision (of a kind of egalitarian Pantheism) has a long spiritual history. The ideal of the alchemists of the Middle Ages involved ‘the uniting of the opposites …the fusion of male and female, .good and evil, life and death — whose union, they believed, eventually created the perfected and completed, ideal personality called Self. The Utopian cosmology in question understands how deeply the Christian faith has molded Western culture and intends to destroy the ‘bourgeois’ Judaeo-Christian culture as the first step toward a better world. To accomplish this, its advocates must weaken the culture systematically in its economy, its military, its psychology, and its morals.They also know what it will take to establish a revived pagan cosmology and will not tolerate half measures. They want all or nothing. The goal is the complete remaking of human identity.

We cannot see into the future to know if the agenda will succeed, but we need to face squarely the movement that is attempting to wrest our culture from its tenuous grip on Twoist (i.e. — God Transcendent) principles. At this  point, such a powerful cosmology takes on an unmistakably religious character. One is reminded of the goal of the occult Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn…. “The Great Work, is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties, and his future; it is especially the prefect emancipation of his will.”

Sternberg’s analysis of “world purificationists” is right but does not go far enough… It fails to capture the true power of the movement: its possession of a new liberating cosmology, including not just politics and economics but sexuality and spirituality. The sociological analysis, joined to the ideology of revolutionary sexual and spiritual liberation, forms a powerfully influential movement, determined to reinvent the world. Indeed, as politics becomes more all-inclusive, it becomes more religious, claiming to answer all human aspirations, physical and spiritual, and to usher in a better world. ”

Dr. Peter Jones
The Other Worldview; Exposing Christianity’s Greatest Threat — pg. 98

1.) Jones’ conviction (easily sustained) is that the West is moving from its religious and historic foundation wherein a Transcendent God is presupposed to a religious foundation where a extramundane Transcendent personal God is scrubbed.

2.) This new worldview upon which, and by which, the West will operate is “Egalitarian Pantheism.” This is the idea that all is One (Monism) and that any distinction is Maya (illusion). This monist Egalitarian Pantheism posits an “Outsidelessness” to the Cosmos. It is an extension of the “God is Dead” movement started by Old Scratch in Eden, advocated for by Nietzsche in the 20th century, and proclaimed as arrived in the 60’s by process theologians.

This new worldview accounts for much of the degradation of the West since it provides the justification for the whole “social construct” theorizing that we are pummeled with today. Since there is no extramundane transcendent God by which to give meaning and definition to anything, therefore anything that previously had a stable meaning and definition is now open for change since without the Christian God all that is left is social construct. So, if man was really the one that constructed the idea of  gender (as one example) then man can be the one who deconstructs gender. As such, since there is no “Outsidedness” to our Cosmos individual men can construct for themselves all and any meaning they might desire. So, men with penises can still be female in gender due to this Egalitarian Pantheism. In Canada a married man with 7 children decided that he was really a six year old little girl.  In a Egalitarian Pantheistic worldview, where God is dead, who is to say that Stefonknee Wolschtt isn’t a six year old little girl?

3.) This is Existenialism come into its own. Given the philosophical arc that the West has been on for the last 200 years we have arrived at the point that was inevitable from the moment philosophy anchored itself in Descartes “Cogito ergo sum.”

4.) This Pantheistic Egalitarianism insists that it provides a moral construct that is “beyond good and evil.” As such any notion of moral policing is pass’e. However, we must keep in mind that this “beyond good and evil” is a contradiction since what is being advocated is that the morality that is “beyond good and evil” is good, while the morality that is not “beyond good and evil,” is evil.

“Do I contradict myself
Very well, then I contradict myself,
I am large
I contain multitudes.”

Walt Whitman 
Song of Myself

5.) In this Pantheistic Egalitarianism, with its putative “beyond good and evil” morality there is the attempt to fuse the opposites. This is a new age version of the Hegelian dialectic wherein the thesis and antithesis are fused into a synthesis. Because of this attempt at fusion there is the conviction that in order for one to be “self-actualized” one must have within themselves both the virtues of a Chairman Mao and the virtues of a Mother Theresa at the same time.

This idea of “fusion of the opposites,” also underlies much of the perversity in our current sexuality. Homosexuality, Transgenderism, bisexuality, etc. are all, at some level, being driven by Egalitarian Pantheism and the desire to fuse the opposites. To fuse the opposites is the sacrament of Egalitarian Pantheism.

6.) Dr. Jones talks about the necessity to weaken the Christian worldview which supports the current culture that yet retains vestiges of Biblical Christianity. Militarily this was pursued, first, with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and now with the full blown reception of the perverted into the ranks of the US Military. In the economy it has been pursued by the mega corporations marketing to the perverted clientele. In psychology it has been pursued by the mainstreaming of sodomy back in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association’s removing “homosexuality” as a mental illness from its DSM. Of course the most recent weakening came in the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision in the Summer of 2015. Hollywood pursues this worldview relentlessly. Movies such as “The Matrix,” “Interstellar,” “Star Wars,” and “Noah,” all send out the message of Egalitarian Pantheism. The “anti-bullying” laws in Government schools is another means by which Egalitarian Pantheism is pursued. Anti-bullying laws are sold as egalitarian but their real purpose is to protect and mainstream sexual perversion in the schools belonging to the State.

7.) Note Jones’ comment about the desire of Pantheistic Egalitarianism to completely remake human identity. The champions of this new worldview will eventually push for the criminalizing of all those who retain a Transcendent God in their thinking and who insist that the reality of God impact the public square.  All will be forced to support this Egalitarian Pantheism. Any churches that remain will be churches that have reinterpreted Biblical Christianity through a Egalitarian Pantheistic grid. It is already the case that the majority of churches in the West already do so, to one degree or another. Like the Hebrews in the Old Testament who dragged in their idols into God’s Temple to worship those idols so the Church in the West today has dragged in the idol of Egalitarian Pantheism into the sanctuary.

8.) Since there is no extramundane God in Egalitarian Pantheism the sovereign Self is absolutized and in essence becomes the god of the system. All is done for the glory of the sovereign self. Any whim is to be embraced, any idea of “self-control,” or any notion of boundaries or limitations is to be eschewed. All is the self and the self is all. This is the sodomite poet Walt Whitman redux,

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil,
this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and
their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never
forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

“Song of Myself”

9.) Note the religious character of all this. As we have already noted the fusing of the opposites is the Egalitarian Pantheism’s sacrament. The Shaman-Priest is found in every man. All is god and god is all. The catechism of Egalitarian Pantheism is provided by Hollywood films. Worship occurs wherever and whenever orgasm takes place. There are Saints such as St. Alfred Kinsey, St. Hugh Hefner, St. Ron Jermy, St. Larry Flynt, St. Traci Lords, St. Janine Lindemulder, St. Jenna Haze and St. Tori Black. Egalitarian Pantheism could have a Saint for every day of the year. Of course, this proves again, that religion is an inescapable concept. Religion never goes away. The renown poet William Blake understood this well,

“Man must & will have Some Religion; if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan, & will erect the Synagogue of Satan, calling the Prince of this World, God; and destroying all who do not worship Satan under the Name of God.”
10.)  Note the role of politics. Via Political diktat and legislative tyranny men and women will be forced into Egalitarian Pantheism. This was apparent in 2015 as seen in the attempt by the Lesbian Mayor of Houston, Anise Parker, to force public bathrooms to be co-ed.  This is apparent in the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision. You will submit to Egalitarian Pantheism or you will be a non-person.

The Inevitability Of Monism With A God Who Is Not Trinitarian

The denial by Jews and Muslims of God’s Trinitarian nature leaves them with a Transcendent yet impersonal God. They retain a “outsided-ness” in their theology but that” outsided-ness” is a Transcendent abstraction that cannot come in contact with humanity and as such all man has left is a humanistic monism and so man must live with a functional outsidelessness.

If they try to cure this lack of existential outsidelessness that occurs with their Transcendent yet impersonal God by making God dependent upon the creature for His actualization unto a personal being then God ceases to be God as he is dependent upon man for His reality.

Rabbinic scholar Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) rightly critiqued Islam for seeing God as ‘unqualified Omnipotence,’ who can never be the ‘Father of mankind,’ and thus is radically impersonal. (See Heschel, ‘The Prophets,’ [New York: Harper, 1962,] pg. 292, 311.) Yet post-biblical Judaism cannot escape Herschel’s critique entirely. The medieval rabbi Maimonides, for example, also confessed an “absolutely transcendent God who is independent of humanity.” (See Reuven Kimelmen, “The Theology of Abraham Heschel,” First Things (Dec. 2009). On the other hand, Kimelmen notes that Heschel commits the opposite error to that of Maimonides (and Islam), namely that of making God dependent on man in a covenantal relationship that both God and man need in order to be who they are. Heschel adopts the rabbinical concept that it is a human witness that in some sense makes God real (Kimelmen, “The Theology of Abraham Heschel”). Once more, God is dependent upon humanity. This is the classic dilemma of a monotheism without the Trinity. Because Heschel does not believe God to be Triune, God depends on man to be personal and therefore cannot be “Wholly Other,” in relation to Creation.

So, it seems, if you are a strict Monotheist you can have a Transcendent God that must be impersonal because He can not have contact with man or you can have a Transcendent God who is only personal because of His dependence upon man. The problem here though is that a God who is dependent upon man in any shape, manner, or form, for His being is neither truly transcendent nor truly God.

It should be said here that this is not only the problem of the Muslim and the Jew, it is also the problem of the neo-orthodox who have so emphasized God’s Transcendence that it is only by a completely subjective encounter with God whereby God can find a subjective status of the personal.

Parts of this Inspired, Parts Paraphrased, and Parts Quoted from
Peter Jones — The Other Worldview — pg. 199-200 (footnote — 27)

What Was Sacrificed In The 60’s Cultural Revolution

If the 60’s sexual and cultural Revolution was the morning of the Cultural Marxist agenda then we are now living in the full noon day sun of its consequences. That noon day sun reveals the flotsam and jetsam of total cultural destruction. The former sanctity of life is dead. The former sanctity of sex has been forever illicitly penetrated. The former sanctity of marriage is annulled. Indeed, even the idea of sanctity itself lies in ruin, reserved only for the idea that sanctity only applies to the idea that nothing is sacred.

Because of that Revolution the family lies in shatters and children are now defacto orphans and waifs being raised by the vicious ministrations of the State and the cruel mercies of the culture. Because of the 60’s Cultural Marxist Revolution the Church is now itself an agent of the Revolution seeing itself tasked with helping people to become well adjusted to the our new Revolutionary context.

All is backwards, upside down and inside out.

DR. PIPER AND HIS INSISTENCE THAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD LIE DOWN AND DIE PART III

We continue to deal with the Anabaptist theology of Dr. Piper

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/should-christians-be-encouraged-to-arm-themselves

#3.) Next John gives us a series of passages from the NT where Jesus talks about coming suffering and persecution. Because the Lord Christ does not say anything about self defense in those passages (even though it is brought forth in a passage Piper neglects [Luke 22:36-38]) therefore the implication is that we should lay down and die.

Response,

Those passages are in a historical context. Jesus is speaking to his disciples about eventualities that will come upon them. Even if the message to the disciples was to “lay down and die” that wouldn’t necessarily mean that would be the message for all time and all disciples everywhere. The fact that the passages that Dr. Piper quotes (Luke 21:12-19, Matthew 10:28, Matthew 10:16-22) are not necessarily for all disciples at all times everywhere is proven by a differing counsel that the Lord Christ gave to His disciples in Luke 22:36-38

36 He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. 37 For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.” 38 And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.”

The Lord Christ counsel the purchase of a sword in vs. 36 because unlike the previous, in-house missionary journeys to their fellow Israelites, the Lord Christ knew that He was now sending his disciples out into the hostile/pagan Gentile world and they would need to be prepared to defend themselves. Dr. Piper is reading the Scripture through his Anabaptistic – Pacifistic lenses and so he concludes what he concludes but Anabaptist theology is not God honoring theology.

Next Dr. Piper goes on to say that there is more of Jason Bourne in defense of others and self then there is Jesus and the Bible. He is a very clever man to come up with such alliteration. Then he implies that those who would defend themselves and others haven’t been regenerated, unlike people who will lay down and die when they are unjustly attacked by sociopaths with guns. Indeed, per Piper, self defense of others and self is as “common and easy as eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.” All Piper is doing here is demonizing his opponents.

Dr. Piper then insists that laying down and dying is the proper response to maniacs with guns shooting up the public square filled with unarmed and judicially innocent citizens. He implies it is impossible to bear witness unto Christ by defending unarmed and judicially innocent citizens against the attacks of madmen. If this is evangelical Christianity Piper and his ilk can have it.

Finally, on Piper’s point #3 he invokes the sainted and holy Jim Elliott and company who “refused to fire their pistols at their killers, while the spears plunged through their chests?”

Let’s keep in mind on this point that Elliott and company orphaned their children and widowed their wives with their behavior. A case could be made that, in acting so recklessly Elliot and company were in violation of the Scripture that teaches, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Second, Piper doesn’t and can’t know that if Elliott and company had defended themselves on that day the result still would have eventually been that the Auca Indians would have converted.

Third, there are countless examples of Christians being murdered where people didn’t convert. Stalin killed millions of unarmed Christian Ukrainians who didn’t fight back and Mother Russia did not convert. How many people were converted when Christians laid down and died when the shooter at Virginia Tech filled the facility with the dead who didn’t fight back? How many were converted when Christians died at Columbine High School when the shooters filled the facility with dead who didn’t fight back? Dr. Piper absolutizes the experience of Jim Elliott and company and suggests that if people defend themselves and others against the murderous intent of crazed gunmen then they aren’t as Holy, Righteous, and Noble as the Sainted Ecuador 5.

This is just pacifism on steroids and Dr. Piper needs to repent for writing like this and so misleading countless young people.

In his fourth “reasoning”  Dr. Piper offers as proof of pacifism the fact that Christ’s servants didn’t fight to keep Him from going to the cross (John 18:36). Dr. Piper seems to imply that we can’t defend ourselves because the followers of Jesus didn’t take up the sword to defend Him when He was about to die.

Response,

a.) When one defends others and one’s self, one isn’t necessarily trying to bring in the Kingdom with the sword. One is merely obeying the sixth commandment which esteems life as worthy of defending because it is the Image of God.

b.) Piper then appeals to I Peter for proof of the need to suffer. Nobody denies that there is a time and a place for silent suffering when God has placed us inescapably under such suffering. Having lived under that paradigm for years I gladly admit that there are seasons where God desires to bear suffering with grace. However, I Peter can’t be twisted into meaning that when maniacs show up at the local Boys’ High Schools basketball game and starts shooting up the place therefore all the Christians have to surrender because they love Jesus.

c.) Lastly, Piper assures us that if we conceal carry and return fire when a “Allahu Akbar Barker” shows up and starts spraying bullets in a crowded place that nobody will ask us for the reason for “hope that lies within us,” because, as Piper says, “they will already know” that our hope lies in our concealed carry weapons.

This statement makes us much as sense as saying that when Piper puts his seat belt on when he goes out for a drive therefore no one will ask him for “hope that lies within him,” because they will already know that he does not have a hope in Jesus but in his seat belt.

Piper’s “reasoning” throughout this piece is just atrocious but it must be dealt with because what John Piper is trying to do is hard bake Anabaptist Pacifism into basic Christianity. We must approach Anabaptist theology the way that the writers of the Belgic Confession dealt with it and agree that we detest it.

DR. PIPER AND HIS INSISTENCE THAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD LIE DOWN AND DIE Part II

We continue to pick apart Dr. John Piper’s Anabaptist theology.

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/should-christians-be-encouraged-to-arm-themselves

Next, Dr. Piper appeals to Romans 12:17-19

17 Recompense to no man evil for evil: procure things honest in the sight of all men. 18 If it be possible, as much as in you is, have peace with all men. 19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.

The reader will have to look at Piper’s link under his #1 in order to the reason why I am responding the way I am.

1.) Self defense or the defense of others is not a matter of avenging ourselves. Self defense is self defense.

2.) Dr. Piper insists that when we enter into defense of others and / or ourselves that we instantly are guilty of not returning good for evil. But, if, as we saw in the previous post, our other and self defense is consistent with the sixth commandment then the firing of our weapons most certainly is an example of returning good for evil. Further, not to enter into self or other defense by firing a weapon would be a matter of returning evil for evil.  Any exaltation, or Christianization, of pacifism that silences the sixth commandment has lost its way.

3.) It is true, as Dr. Piper notes, that the Magistrates wields the sword but the Scripture likewise teaches that self defense is allowed,

Exodus 22:2 If –a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him…

In Proverbs 25:26, God tells us: “A righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled fountain, and a corrupt spring.”

And Yet, Dr. Piper, in contradiction to God’s Word, would have the righteous falling down before the wicked be considered a matter of righteousness.

3.) Any claim that a private citizen doesn’t have the God given obligation to defend themselves or others from aggressive attack as coming from the unjust psychopath and / or the maniacal religious nutcase is elevating a misplaced Anabaptist pietism  that belittles the gift of life that God has given us over biblical revelation.