Category: Apologetics

McAtee contra Horton on Crying and Laughing Article

At this link,

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/entry/blog/2015/07/03/i-ll-cry-on-saturday-but-i-ll-laugh-on-sunday

We once again see the absolute absurdity that is R2K in action.

“There seemed to be a moment where we could debate the value of marriage from radically different worldviews and yet remain committed to the common good.”

Michael Horton

Bret responds,

Do you really want to send your son to a Seminary where one of the leading professors actually thinks that people with radically different worldviews can agree on the common good?

If they can agree on the common good then they don’t have radically different worldviews. After all, it is one’s worldview that dictates what the common good is defined as and if you have two radically different worldviews you are, ipso facto, going to have two radically different definitions of the common good.

Obviously, one of the two parties with a “radically different worldview” needs to surrender his radically different worldview in order to come to agreement on the common good. Dr. Michael Horton did just that some time ago with his offer of going along with “domestic partnerships for the protection of legal and economic security”.

Horton continues,

“On Saturday, we were lamenting the decision. But then this response came back from one friend, who happens to be a U. S. Senator: “Yes, it’s a big disappointment, but tomorrow’s Sunday, Christ is risen, and ‘trust not in princes.’

I’ll cry on Saturday, but I’ll laugh on Sunday.”

Bret responds,

Trust not in princes? How about we add “Trust not in Seminary Professors or “Christian” Senators”?

So … on Saturday Christ is not risen so we must lament but on Sunday Christ is risen so we can laugh?

Horton is R2K and this is just one more example of the absolutely asinine reasoning that emanates from R2K wisemen. When we live in common time we lament but when we live in sacred time (Sabbath) we laugh. We are living and doing the bifurcated rumba.

In another snippet Horton opines,

“… more tragic is the fact that mainline Protestantism has been at the forefront of the movement for same-sex marriage and, although a majority of evangelicals still disapprove, the tide is turning. “

Bret responds,

Horton styles it “tragic” what mainline Protestantism has done, and yet according to Horton’s own deeply flawed “theology”  R2K churches share in the mainline Protestantisms culpability in all this because R2K Churches, as they have been consistent with their own theology did not, have not, and do not resist as Churches, this wickedness about which Horton laments on Saturdays. How can Horton point a finger at the Mainlines when his own theology has repeatedly insisted that the Mainlines should not be resisted, overturned, or challenged by R2K Churches since the Church as Church has nothing to do with those issues?

Horton continues,

Hearts have changed. Part of that is due to the fact that we all are friends with LBGT neighbors who are decent people.

Bret

I know someone who likes to bed his dairy cows. He is a decent person also.

Has the word “decent” so devolved that we can consider someone decent as long as they bring a meal when someone is ill and they keep their lawn up nicely, even though they are involved in what God calls an abomination? I’ve read that Stalin was a charming and wonderful host for State dinners … really quite a decent chap.

Horton,

In any case, the culture war has been lost. Now what?

Bret,

Thanks, in no small part, to Horton’s own R2K retreat-ism and constant bleating for 20 years about how the culture war was lost.  Horton has been aiding and abetting the loss of the culture war by saying things like,

“Although a contractual relationship denies God’s will for human dignity, I could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security.”

Can anyone tell me the difference between a state-licensed marriage and a civil union?  There is none and these types of “solutions” that Mike offers is one reason why reason why Mike can say the culture war has been lost. Here we see that surrender is easy. Even a prominent R2K professor can do it without much practice.

Horton wants to draw a sharp dichotomy between our culture as battlefield and our culture as mission field. I would insist that is a false dichotomy since every culture that a Christian is engaged with is simultaneously battle field and mission field. Does Horton really believe that mission fields are not battle fields? The Apostle Paul would have found such a notion at best naive and at worst just plain stupid.

Catechizing Unruly Children

Fascinating that all these avatar photos of the people bigoted against Christianity are all streamed with the rainbow over their faces. Can you say “group think?”

1.) The idea of “Rights” is not a Christian concept. Christians speak of duties. Still, forcing sodomite definitions on the social order is indeed depriving people of “rights.” It is depriving them of the right to have objective definition of marriage and this “right” was taken away by tyrannical action of a wicked kind.

2.) Separation of Church and State is a myth in the way that your using it. The phrase was in none of the founding documents. Indeed, many of the States had state Churches that were supported by state governments well into the 19th century. In point of fact Church and State while distinct can never be separated and if they are separated the consequence will be the kind of conflict that we are seeing in the broader culture. This is so since both Church and State must be pinned upon the foundation of religion. If Church and State are separated and pinned on different religious foundation the result will be conflict. No two distinct religions can survive together in the same social order for long. However, what does work in order to change the overall religious foundation of a people is to chant “separation of Church and State.” This gives those who want to change the religious foundation of the State time to wreak their havoc without being interfered with by the Church.

3.) You insist that my “Christian definition of marriage doesn’t get to define the legal one.” Never mind that this has been the legal definition in the West for millennium. Still, even if we put that aside why should it be the case that the sodomite definition of marriage gets to be the legal one? Hoisted on your own petard much?
However, you have run into the fact that law is ALWAYS a reflection of some god, God and religion. Stipulating failures along the way, law as been a reflection of the Christian God in the West for centuries. Now the law is fast edging towards being a reflection of the Molech god of sodomy and the Molech god of sodomy is forcing the social order to accept its definition of marriage.

But of course you can’t see that because you have your head up the rectum of your Molech god. If you want to know what the water is like don’t ask a fish.

4.) You speak of Christians “brainwashing toddlers?” How do you think the nation went from appalled by the notion of sodomy 60 years ago to the point where stupid millennials find it perfectly acceptable? Can you say brainwashing and propaganda? Of course you can.

5.) Since Genesis 1 is the beginning of created time I’m confident that the Biblical faith has been around even before faith, despite your insistence to the contrary. (After all Adam believed before he had a wife.)

6.) Yes … Christians do have a monopoly on moral morality. Although I will conceded that pagans have a monopoly on immoral morality.

If you deny God then all that is left is the material. If all there is, is the material then morality is defined as nothing more then three wolves and two sheep voting on what is for dinner. Only Christianity can provide an objective basis for stable morality.

7.) Your spouting of Lev. 19:19 just reveals your ignorance concerning the Christian faith and does nothing to advance your cause though it does wonderfully demonstrate what a fool you are,

I will in a separate comment explain for you your error on this matter. It’s ok that you are just regurgitating something you’ve heard in the broader culture. I will unwind it for you.

8.) You don’t believe in sin and yet here you are, in essence, saying I’m sinning because I don’t believe that sodomy is a legitimate definition.

Sin is an inescapable category. If you will not have the Biblical definition of sin as provided by the Sovereign God you will merely redefine the word in order to fit your sovereign ordaining of the world.

Clearly Jeremy, you likewise are a bigot against Christ, the Christian faith and Christians.I’m all about an exchange of ideas Nik. We have been exchanging all over the place here. What you don’t like is that you’re being told you are wrong and are getting creamed in the process.

You mistake me for someone who is only interested in armchair debate. NO! I’m interested in

1.) Defending the honor of the Lord Christ against all of his enemies.

2.) converting you by dealing honestly and lovingly with your soul

3.) At the very least making the people who only read these threads without commenting think twice before they repeat your inanities.

4.) embarrassing your foolishness and exposing your childish argument.

Dr. Brian Lee — Do As I Say, Not As I Do

It is possible that some of you may remember my interaction with R2K-phile Dr. Brian Lee from last November. Dr. Brian Lee, you will recall, informed us that he has a legit Ph.D and is a Reverend Doctor. Further he has read books (most of them in Latin) and he has had his dissertation published with Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, which is a legit German academic house. Anyway … Dr. Lee said in our interactions back then,

“The Good News of Jesus Christ is the sole focus of our Gospel ministry, because we have neither the authority nor the expertise to weigh in on civil matters…. Do forget the OT, please. Seriously. You must understand that Romans 12 – 13 and the rest of the NT is a radical departure from OT Israel. Israel’s mandate was to make the land of Canaan (and other nations by extension) submit to its rule and reign. The NT Church is to submit to the reign of the nations. These two mandates are not only different, they are opposite. The prophets were calling the kings to account because it was in their portfolio, it was a theocracy, and the “King” was a type of Christ. NT prophets are preachers, and Caesar is not in their portfolio. Only sin in and among God’s people.”

Rev. Dr. Brian Lee, on R2k submission to Ceasar, Nov. 2014

But now it seems that Dr. Lee is whistling a new tune.  Just yesterday he was caught giving advice on the whole SCOTUS Sodomy affair.

“I encourage folks to read this roundup (Lee provides a link) of what the dissenting justices believe are the religious liberty implications of Friday’s SCOTUS decision on SSM (Same Sex Marriage). These aren’t partisan hacks raising baseless alarm bells. These are constitutional scholars pointing out the disastrous side-effects of having engineered this cultural transformation through the courts. A legislative enactment of SSM would have been far more orderly, peaceful, and constructive to our constitutional form of government.

The failure of Kennedy’s majority opinion to articulate or guarantee free exercise of religion for opponents of this decision is astounding, and gravely troubling. It’s not accidental.”

My question to the good Latin reading Doctor is based upon his words in November. Based on his words in November why should he or any member of the clergy care what SCOTUS does? All of what Lee published on this subject has taught us is that none of us have the authority nor the expertise to weigh in on civil matters. Yet here he is weighing in on civil matters. Perhaps what the man with the legit Ph.D meant is that none of us, except the star of Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, have the authority or expertise to weigh in on civil matters?

Is R2K really just a ruse to get everyone else in the Church to shut up about these civil matters so that the benighted R2K geniuses of the world have a clear field in order to instruct the cattle?  Or is it just the case, as I’ve argued before, that R2K is a miasma of contradiction and inconsistency that only someone with pretzel logic can understand?

Dr. Brian Lee (Nov. 2014) —  “NT prophets are preachers, and Caesar is not in their portfolio. Only sin in and among God’s people.”

Dr. Brian Lee (June 2015) — “A legislative enactment of SSM would have been far more orderly, peaceful, and constructive to our constitutional form of government. “

Has Dr. Brian Lee had a “Road to Damascus” conversion or, as I think it more likely the case, is he merely demonstrating the bi-polar tendency in all R2K “thinking?”

Now as to his actual words themselves, as typed in bold print, one wonders if Dr. Brian Lee is against SSM as a principle, or is he just against SSM as it is implemented  by judicial fiat?

R2K — A “theology” that keeps you guessing.

The Rx To Cure Those Who Have The R2K Impulse

“… there was a dialectical (P and not P) tension between the Pietist impulse to flee the world into a new monasticism and its opposite, to identify the Christian faith with present social concerns.”

R. Scott Clark 

Let’s get this straight. On one hand Scott is telling us that it is surrender to the “Pietist impulse” when Christians retreat from the world. On the other hand Scott is telling us that at the same time it is to surrender to the “Pietist impulse” when one insists that Christians must champion the idea of Christian culture. So, per Scott, when one retreats one is giving in to the dreaded Pietist impulse, and when one engages the culture in a uniquely Christian fashion one is afflicted with the dreaded Pietist impulse.

But wait … there remains hope in shedding ourselves of Scott’s boogeyman Pietist impulse. We can embrace Scott’s R2K and go all schizophrenic. Scott would have us shed this Pietist impulse by splitting our selves in half in order to pursue the hyphenated life. Scott’s prescription is  for us to withdrawal, per monasticism, in our grace realm living while we should be fully engaged in our common realm living. According to Scott’s Escondido R2K theology the answer to the Pietistic impulse is to become schizophrenic.

My prescription for Scott is pharmacological. In order to cure his schizophrenia I recommend either a return to Biblical theology or, failing that this good Dr. prescribes some Thorazine in order to cure the schizophrenia that ails the R2K of its gnostic hyphenated life.

 

R2K’s Dispensational Habit

“Read on its own terms, the teaching of the New Testament about the Kingdom of God is remarkably silent about the pressing social concerns of the day.”

R. Scott Clark 
Escondido R2K Theologian

Here the dispensational tendency of R2K is seen. Scott wants to consider the Kingdom of God as only in its New Testament reality. But all Reformed scholars realize that the Kingdom of God in the New Testament was a concept that had long been anticipated from the Old Testament. The Kingdom of God in the New Testament is fulfillment of the Old Testament anticipations. As such we have to go to the Old Testament to view what was expected of this Kingdom of God and there in the OT we find a promised coming Kingdom that is replete with social order concerns. So concerned with the social order is the Kingdom of God that we are even told that the lion will lay down with the lamb.

In Isaiah 65 we read of this present and future Kingdom,

17 “ For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create;
For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing,
And her people a joy.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
And joy in My people;
The voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her,
Nor the voice of crying.
20 “ No more shall an infant from there live but a few days,
Nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days;
For the child shall die one hundred years old,
But the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
They shall not plant and another eat;
For as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people,
And My elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain,
Nor bring forth children for trouble;
For they shall be the descendants of the blessed of the LORD,
And their offspring with them.
24 “ It shall come to pass
That before they call, I will answer;
And while they are still speaking, I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
The lion shall eat straw like the ox,
And dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,”
Says the LORD.

This passage has been surrounded by a great deal of debate as to when we can anticipate such blessedness. Pre-millennialist insists that this description comes to pass in the Kingdom of God that Christ establishes once He returns. A-millennialists insist that this description comes to pass in the eschaton. Post-millenialist insist that all that Isaiah speaks of has been inaugurated by and in Christ, and so will come progressively in Christ as His Kingdom, (His new creation of heaven and earth) like the Mustard seed, increasingly reflects what it has already established in an inaugurative fashion, with the consummation being the fulfillment of what has been inaugurated and all that is becoming true progressively regarding this present and future Kingdom of God. Clearly the Old Testament teaches that the Kingdom of God has social order impact.

In the ministry of the Lord Christ, He impacts the social order by refuting and correcting the cultural gatekeepers at every turn. Indeed, in his healing ministry the Lord Christ is demonstrating that the Kingdom of God has impact in the lives of people that they, now being clean, may return to participation in the social order. Clearly the life and ministry of Christ in the New Testament has social order impact.

When St. Paul brings the Gospel of the Kingdom (Resurrection and the Kingdom of God are the two main preaching themes in Acts) to Ephesus (Acts 19) the consequence is that the social order of Ephesus experiences a major shake up in its economic, and political social order. The Kingdom was pressing in on the wicked social order of Ephesus and it made for the threat of change in Ephesus. Earlier in Acts 17 St. Paul again brings the Gospel of the Kingdom message to Athens and again threatens to overturn the social order of Athens.  Clearly the Apostolic ministry in Acts demonstrated the Kingdom of God has social order impact.

That the New Testament doesn’t articulate again what the Old Testament taught about the impact of the Kingdom on social concerns is no reason to toss the Old Testament teaching on the Kingdom of God. Scott should know better.