Category: Apologetics

Not Getting R. Scott Clark’s Inability to Get The Obvious

“Practically, what does it mean to speak of transforming softball or orchestral music or any other cultural endeavor? Why cannot softball simply be what it is, recreation? What is distinctively Christian about “Christian art” or “Christian history” or Christian math”? I understand that the rhetoric is sacrosanct (a shibboleth, as it were) but what does it signify? What are the particulars? I understand that when we get to ultimate matters, e.g., theology, there is a distinctively Christian view of things and there is certainly a Christian interpretation of the significance of things. That is a Christian worldview properly understood but what does it mean to speak of transforming penultimate things? Is the neo-Kuyperian view related to the Anabaptist vision of nature and grace and if not, how are they essentially different? What if Leonard Verduin intuited something?”

Dr. R. Scott Clark 
Heidleblog

Recently, someone left the link to a brief Clark essay wherein this quote was found in the comments section on Iron Ink. The commenter thought this essay proved that Clark was making progress. I disagree.

Clark objects to the idea of grace transforming nature (and so culture) preferring instead to say that grace renews nature in salvation. Clark desires to keep the renewing power of grace constrained to humans as it pertains to their salvation. However, this seems to be a constrained view of reality. After all, it is grace renewed and saved people who are the ones who create culture (an embodiment of nature). If grace renews nature in salvation then grace is going to renew everything that those salvifically renewed people are going to create in culture. One simply can’t have grace renewing nature in salvation without that renewal getting into everything the renewed and salvation visited person touches.  The products of culture, after all, don’t come into being apart from the renewed or unrenewed people who create them. I honestly don’t understand why this is so difficult for R2K Clark and his R2K buds.

Then Clark lists several, what I take are supposed to be real stumpers. as to how grace renews nature (grace transforms culture). Let’s take these one by one.

1.) Softball

I am going to use baseball as an example but it would apply to softball as well. Baseball just gives me more at-hand examples.

In 2017 the Houston Astros (Baseball) won the World Series. Sometime afterward it was revealed that the Astros won the World Series by the art of cheating as they were stealing signs. Several key team leaders lost their jobs and the team itself was fined $5 million for this cheating scandal. Allow me to propose to Dr. Clark that Christian baseball vis-a-vis non-Christian baseball would be less inclined to have this problem.

If Dr. Clark doesn’t like this example we could note that non-Christian baseball has seen performing-enhancing drugs be a huge issue in the recent past providing a barrier to Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmerio, and Roger Clemens gaining entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame. They are each in essence guilty of playing non-Christian baseball.

We could go on to give examples of Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes so that when he slid into 2nd base he would cut up the Shortstop covering the bag. We could write about Pete Rose paying the penalty for playing non-Christian baseball by violating the rules against gambling while a player.

Let’s pretend that genuine Reformation visited Major League Baseball. Does Dr. Clark actually believe that grace would not renew nature so that grace transformed baseball culture?

2.) Orchestral Music

Francis Schaeffer in this work  “The God Who is There,” spends some time looking at the Orchestral music of composer John Cage and demonstrates how Cage’s orchestral music was a declaration that the cosmos was the product of time plus chance. Cage’s music communicated that there was no meaning. This would be non-Christian Orchestral music and it is again difficult to understand how Clark can find this concept difficult. Is what Cage did in music akin to what Bach did in music?

3.) Art

Clark wants to know what makes Christian art, Christian. First, let us note there that the artist as God’s image-bearer cannot avoid getting their worldview into their art. Every piece of art means something and the meaning of that Art is going to determine whether the art in question is Christian or non-Christian or a mixture of both.

Second, art typically aims at beauty. Beauty is an objective category as existing in different genres. Art exists along an objective scale in those different genres of ugly to beautiful. The more beautiful a piece of art is the more Christian that art is and vice-versus.

It would seem that when we compare the modern art of a woman pushing paintballs out of her vagina onto a canvas (yes… that is a thing) and compare that to Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” or Monet’s “Water Lilies,” we would have to say that inasmuch as Rembrandt and Monet were going after beauty their work more closely approached Christian than pushing paintballs out of a human orifice on to a canvas.

4.) History

This one is a little breathtaking as history is really nothing but theology told in another venue. Does Clark not realize that a period of history as handled by the Marxist Historians Charles and Mary Beard is going to look and read very differently than that same period of history as covered by the Christian Historian C. Gregg Singer?

History is Christian or not Christian depending on the presuppositions that the historian has who is approaching the time period they are writing upon. I expect Nesta Webster or Edmund Burke as Christians to tell me a different story about the French Revolution than I expect to be told by Simon Schama or Albert Sobul. When I read the accounts of the American era of Reconstruction I expect a different report from the Dunning School than I expect to read from the Marxist “historian” Eric Foner.

5.) Math

Clark in all likelihood believes that Math is impervious to Christian or non-Christian categories. However perhaps Clark hasn’t heard of one Kareem Carr?

Harvard PhD student Kareem Carr’s recently had a dialogue about the abstract nature of mathematics and it was profiled by Popular Mechanics in an article entitled “Why Some People Think 2+2=5…and why they’re right.”

Carr’s “hope is that you understand the flexible relationship between our mathematical systems, our perceptions of the world, and the symbolic manipulations we use to reason about reality.

Note what is being said here is that mathematics is a social construct. There is nothing in objective in mathematics.  Any such reasoning gives us non-Christian mathematics.

So, pace Dr. Clark we do see that these matters can be handled either in a Christian manner or a non-Christian manner. Frankly, it is bewildering to me at least how any educated man could not readily see this. It’s like not readily noticing the oddity of tits on a boar.

However, the oddity does not end here for Dr. Clark. He goes on to say above that;

“I understand that when we get to ultimate matters, e.g., theology, there is a distinctively Christian view of things and there is certainly a Christian interpretation of the significance of things.”

What else is baseball, orchestral music, art, history, and math but “things?” And if they are “things” then why should there not be a Christian view of these things? Another theologian who shared the same last name as our erstwhile Escondido novice wrote a book a generation ago titled “A Christian View of Men and Things.” Gordon Clark realized that all things were at their heart theological. This is something that seems to escape Dr. R. Scott Clark. Maybe Scott should pick up Gordon’s book and give it a read. Maybe then he would understand?

 

 

McAtee Contra Dr. Walker & the Godless Coalition — Part VI

This is part VI of one of the dumbest articles ever written by a Seminary prof. His name is Andrew Walker. The reason it is so dumb is that all of this has been answered in the past and yet he puts pen to paper to recycle all this again. This article is posted on “The Godless Coalition” Platform.

AW wrote,

While revelation is indeed supreme, the arena where those norms are proclaimed and the method for how they’re proclaimed needs careful attention. Expecting leaders to mediate divine commands sounds nice where there is cultural homogeneity, but that is not the world in which we live. Theonomy rests on the assumption of religious minorities being made second-class citizens. Nowhere in the New Testament are the governing authorities tasked with expounding God’s Word as the source of judicial standards.

BLMc responds,

1.) We agree that the method for how the norms are proclaimed needs careful attention. When is Walker going to start giving careful attention to this calling? What the man is offering is reckless methodological antinomianism.

2.) Note that what Walker is saying above. If we had cultural homogeneity then Christian leaders could mediate divine commands but since we don’t have cultural homogeneity we have to give God’s commands the whole heave-ho because after all, we have to accommodate cultural heterogeneity – we have to accommodate the gods of the non-Christians among us.

3.) So the world in which we live dictates whether or not we will own God and His Law-Word as sovereign?

4.) If religious minorities being second-class citizens in Muslim Saudi Arabia is not a problem why must it be a problem here? At the very least there is a rabid pursuit here to make Christians a religious minority and so second class citizens in America and that because America is increasingly embracing the theonomic law of pagan gods. It is simply the case that religious minorities are always second-class citizens in every social order. For example, when the Christian definition of marriage was tossed out in Obergefell v. Hodges Christians were made second-class citizens. Sodomite marriage makes me a second-class citizen because I believe that only men and women should be married. My convictions are being made second class and so I am as a Christian am being made second-class.

5.) What we see here is that Walker is in love with pluralism (so-called). Walker can’t imagine any social order that doesn’t embrace pluralism. But pluralism is not possible for social-orders since pluralism doesn’t allow for those convictions in their putative pluralistic society that does not allow for pluralism. All people who don’t allow for pluralism are second-class citizens.

6.) Notice how for Walker the NT makes the OT null and void. It it is not in the NT it doesn’t count. This is classic Baptist and now Reformed R2K hermeneutic and so not Biblical.

AW wrote,

No state can long persist in moral rebellion; nor does the New Testament’s pattern for the state rely on special revelation for its legitimacy. Christians must inhabit this uncomfortable tension. Government is a legitimate enterprise that can yield justice even apart from its leaders submitting to special revelation. Paul suggests this is attainable in Romans 13—and he does so without relying on the Mosaic covenant. Speaking biblically and even historically, it is possible for pagan rulers to rule justly (even if their understanding of justice lacks full coherence). Where this occurs, we should be grateful and see this as evidence of God’s common grace in the world.

BLMc responds

1.) As we have noted Walker’s paradigm guarantees the rise of moral rebellion. Indeed, Walker’s paradigm is rooted and grounded in moral rebellion.

2.) In terms of Magistrates and special Revelation let us consult Calvin;

“And for proof thereof, what is the cause that the heathen are so hardened in their own dotages? It is for that they never knew God’s Law, and therefore they never compared the truth with the untruth. But when God’s law come in place, then doth it appear that all the rest is but smoke insomuch that they which took themselves to be marvelous witty, are found to have been no better than besotted in their own beastliness. This is apparent. Wherefore let us mark well, that to discern that there is nothing but vanity in all worldly devices, we must know the Laws and ordinances of God. But if we rest upon men’s laws, surely it is not possible for us to judge rightly. Then must we need to first go to God’s school, and that will show us that when we have once profited under Him, it will be enough. That is all our perfection. And on the other side, we may despise all that is ever invented by man, seeing there is nothing but *fondness and uncertainty in them. And that is the cause why Moses terms them rightful ordinances. As if he should say, it is true indeed that other people have store of Laws: but there is no right all all in them, all is awry, all is crooked.”

* fondness = foolishness, weakness, want of sense and judgment

John Calvin
Sermons on Deuteronomy, sermon 21 on Deut. 4:6-9

We could provide numerous quotes from the Reformers that belie the reality that they think that Walker is all wet when it comes to his statement that justice can be had apart from God’s law as revealed in Scripture.

3.) Paul does not do in Romans 13 what Walker claims he did. In point of fact, if “good” and “evil” in Romans 13 can only be known by God’s Law-Word then Paul is teaching that Magistrates do need God’s Law Word in order to get “good” and “evil” correct.

4.) It is much more likely that apart from God’s revealed Law-Word that magistrates will rule unjustly as history repeatedly demonstrates. All because Magistrates are not as wicked and unjust as they might be that doesn’t mean that they are giving “justice.”

Three Sentences From C. S. Lewis That Destroys All Materialistic Worldviews

“Granted that Reason is prior to matter, I can understand how men should come to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology and for ‘scientific cosmology’ we might read ‘Darwinism’ as world view then not only can I not fit in religion, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.”

Clive Staples Lewis

Lewis presupposes here by his use of “reason” the idea that there is a spiritual component to man that cannot be explained and accounted for by those who insist that man is nothing but matter in motion and that matter is all there is. The idea of materialism is the worldview of Scientific cosmology – Darwinism. In point of fact, the consistent Darwinist can not even account for “reason” in their materialistic worldview, as Lewis points out. If, ontologically speaking, man is composed of more than just matter than his rational explanations of the universe and of himself can possibly obtain since man’s reason has reason to believe in a universe that is objective to himself. Without this denial of materialism all of man’s thinking, like all of man’s living is just so much time + chance + circumstance. There is no objective reason for any of it.

Lewis cannot fit materialistic science into a materialistic “Scientific” cosmology because in that cosmology man does not have a mind but only has materialistic brain matter. That brain matter is merely a materialistic organ that secretes thought the way the liver secretes bile. A biochemical organ that merely secretes thought hardly gives one reason to think it is worthy of any serious consideration. One day it might secrete one kind of thought depending upon how the biochemistry of the body is running. The next day it might secrete the exact other types of thought. Brains that are only materialistic cannot give an account of their reality let alone accounts of the Universe.

Without Biblical notions of reason, man is a completely subjective being who is entirely trapped within himself. Without Biblical notions of reason (are there any other types of reasonable reason?) man is left to force in order to organize his world. If man is merely matter in motion and testifies and believes that the objective world cannot be accessed (Hello postmodernism and Critical Race Theory) then inevitably man, if he is consistent, will have to enter into the war of all against all as each man with his thought secreting brains seeks to dominate all other thought secreting brains.

One can see by this quote how we have ended up where we are with social constructs like the theory of “social constructs.” If matter is the whole explanation of man and if monistic man thus is shut up within himself then monistic man’s thought secreting brain can determine for himself whatever he wants himself to be and no one else’s thought secreting brain can deny him his own socially constructed reality.

We have come to the place where we can say along with Shakespeare;

Man’s life “is a tale as told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,. Signifying nothing. ”

Diversity’s Dirty Little Secret Exposed

“When considering the broad theme of Oneness, it is important to note that this is not about imposed cultural sameness for the crushing of expression or creativity. Tolerance and openness exist for cultural, ethnic, social, personal, sexual, and religious identities. Diversity is encouraged, so long as divisive exclusivity — ‘separateness’ or ‘two-ness’ — does not threaten the fabric of anticipated harmony. In fact, distinctive cultural sensitivities and personal tastes are respected so long as they remain within the mosaic.”

Carl Teichrib
Game of Gods; The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment – p. 13

Understand what is being said here. The Monistic Uniformity that we are headed for will allow the appearance of diversity but only if that diversity contributes to the major theme of Monism. You can be sexually perverted in any direction you like (hence Diversity) but you will not be allowed to say anything that insists that such a thing as sexual perversion exists because that would be to interject a Separateness or Two-ness of right and wrong into the Monism that can not be questioned. So, people will be allowed diversity in perversion and abnormality but they will not be allowed any diversity that suggests that there is a standard by which all diversity must comply. In such a way the opponents of Two-ism can claim diversity while all the while pursuing Monism (Oneism).

My Time In Purgatory IV

So mendacious and malevolent were my crimes against the Cultural Marxist norm that the Clown Reformed Church felt it necessary to pass overtures at their annual Clown World Synod (CWS) in 2019 shadow boxing against Kinism. In this entry of my “Time in Purgatory,” I take a look at the results as well as some of the quotes that were provided by Dr. Rev. Dusty Lugnut who served at CWS 2019 as something like a roving reporter.

I.) Synod Example “A”

1.) A delegate presents the following motion:

That synod, given the recent history of Kinist teaching in a particular church of the CRCNA, admonish councils and classes to promote confessional fidelity and mutually to pursue special discipline of an officebearer who is found to hold views contrary to our standards.

Grounds:

a. The pastor who was teaching Kinist views was able to do so for

several years without special discipline being successful.

b. By admonishing councils and classes to encourage confessional
fidelity and special discipline when applicable, it sends a strong
message from the broadest body of our denomination that Kinist

teaching will not be tolerated in our churches.

—Adopted

1.) The Church I serve was never a particular Church in the CRC. This Church was started by the Clown Reformed Church back in 1965 when I was 5 years old. By the time I arrived in 1995 those original Churches had long cut ties with their “daughter” Church. The Church was operating essentially as an independent church that was dating the CRC trying to determine if it ever wanted to get married and jump in bed. From the very beginning of my time here we had our own counsel, we set our own budgets, we took in our own members, and we distributed the Sacraments with officers unordained by the Clown Reformed Church. We were a defacto Independent Church who was still dating the CRC trying to determine if we would become a particular Church.

a.) Special Discipline was NEVER successful because special discipline was NEVER attempted. They certainly had every opportunity in the world to enact special discipline if they wanted but they didn’t do that and they didn’t do that because they knew that their own Cultural Marxism would be exposed if they went after me in the Church courts.

Not once was there ever a substantive conversation with anybody in the Classis about what I understood Kinism to mean. Not once did anybody refer to anything I had written (and I had written tons) as somehow proving that my views were out of bounds. Indeed, the Church council that was assigned the task of overseeing us and was largely in name only (something that only took place after nearly 20 years of being completely independent) explicitly praised me to the Denominational District and recommended my being given an “honorable release.” Something that the vindicative Cultural Marxist feminists and churchmen of the District could in no way allow. The letter from the supervising counsel stated in part,

“Rev. Bret McAtee has served in ministry in the Charlotte Clown Reformed Church, Charlotte, MI for the past 2o years (?), faithfully serving the flock committed to his care. He has labored tirelessly among them, offering the comfort with which Christ has comforted us, providing godly council and expounding on the Word of God. He has also provided direction for their homeschooling efforts, often teaching World History, History of philosophy, and Worldview Formation.

Rev. McAtee also has developed a significant web presence through his years of ministry at Charlotte CRC, including his personal blog, ironink.org. Through his writings, he has gained a following online and has expanded his influence by writing articles for ezines….

His involvement with groups promoting Christian Reconstruction has caused some consternation for colleagues in the denomination and some peers outside the denomination. Rev. McAtee has engaged in the rigorous defense of his beliefs, but always with a spirit of Christian unity — as evidence by his long participation in a peer group among the Classis Lake Eerie pastors in Michigan. It (spirit of Christian unity) is also evidenced by his willingness to change his rhetorical methods when some in the classis felt he crossed a line of collegiality with his comments. (i.e. — The earlier mentioned meeting where a fellow Pastor was raped and destroyed by their Kangaroo court.)…

The Council of _____ _____ ______  (the supervising council) proposes that Classis Lake Eerie grant the request of Rev. Bret McAtee to be released from his calling as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament in the Clown Reformed Church, in accordance with article 14-b of the Church Order. We also propose that his release be declared honorable.

Grounds

1.) Rev. McAtee’s long service at Charlotte CRC should be commended 
2.) His request comes as a result of his own reflection and understanding that his theological commitments will continue to disturb the peace within the Clown Reformed Church.”

Except for two sentences which I will return to later this is what the supervising council recommended. You will notice that they saw no danger. They saw zero need for any “special discipline.” They understood that any problematic Kinism they saw was by others wrongly attaching my name to what other people had written under the rubric of Kinism — material that I had and would now disavow. Just as there is a great deal of what passes as Christianity today that high-profile Christians write that I would vehemently disavow. My supervising council gave me the ecclesiastical version of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. However, unlike the District as a whole, and the Synod as a whole, this Church was not a den of raging Cultural Marxists and the minister of the supervising Church was a Conservative by impulse.

Now at one point, before the above letter was written, there was an occasion when the Classis start bandying about charges of “racism” (whatever the hell that means) against me but all of that was done completely contrary to their own book of Church order yet even then all they did was wag their fingers arriving at no-decision though their virtue signaling had them all clapping each other on the back.

b.) The Classis I was located in had multiple opportunities to pursue “special discipline” but instead of bringing charges simply allowed me to go my own way consistent with my request. The reason for that is those clowns knew they did not have a leg to stand on. There was never, at any time, any teaching on my part, that was not consistent with both the Scriptures and 2000 years of Church History.

II.) Synod Example “B”

That 2019 Clown Reformed (CRC) synod accede to Overture 7, section XI, A-D.

Ground: Kinist theology and practice is neither biblical nor Reformed.

Rather, Kinism is a twisting of Reformed doctrine. The Bible makes

clear that God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way. Kinist principles and praxis distort this truth.

—Adopted

Bret responds,

God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in EVERY way?

Really … God’s ideal is all families are equal in beauty? In intelligence? In height? In achievement? Clan McAtee is equal in every way to the House of Windsor in wealth and influence? All families are equal in artistic gifting? All families are equal in athletic ability? All families equal in income? In opportunity?

The ability to pile shit this high without realizing that one is doing so is truly breath-taking.

Might one be allowed to ask; “Where in the Bible does it make clear that God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way?” Chapter and verse, please. I want to read this with my own eyes.

Can you imagine hundreds of Reformed synodical delegates voting to confirm such an obviously dumbass statement and all that in the name of Jesus Christ? And yet that is what was done by the CRC in 2019. This statement is Marxism on steroids. God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way?

Karl Marx… call your office.

And our roving reporter Dr. Rev. Dusty Lugnut provided these quotes from some of the delegates;

Joey Reckoma, Classis Central California, said, “Kinism says that people of color are less than human.”

Bret Responds,

Actually Joey if you didn’t have your head so far up your most southerly aperture that you had to unzip your zipper to have a conversation you would realize that no Kinist has ever said that people of color are less than human. That is a Christian Identity conviction among only the more extreme CI types.

Jake Boring, Classis Alberta North, said what makes Kinism a heresy is that it distorts the central Christian teaching that all humans are created in the image of God. Some wondered how kinism could have been tolerated for so long in the CRC.

Bret responds,

Again … this is a confusion with the most extreme version of Christian Identity. Kinism is NOT CI. All kinists affirm that all humans are the Imago Dei.

Something that should be added here just as way of information is that kinists come in all colors. I have good friends who are black who are kinist. I have good friends who are Asian who are kinist. I have good friends who are from the sub-continent of India who are kinist. And this because we are each and all Christian and understand that what is called Kinism today is merely vanilla historic Christianity, believed in all times, and in all places, among all Christian people until 1950 or so.

Tigh Wagontrain asked, “How does a pastor like this not get disciplined?” He presented a motion passed by synod that “councils and classes be admonished to promote confessional fidelity.” The language of the synod declaration on kinism calls it a “twisting” of Reformed teaching.

Bret responds,

A.) A pastor like this does not get disciplined because he didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe Tigh you think Kuyper should have been disciplined? Have you read what he wrote on different races? Or maybe Guillaume Von Prinisterer likewise should have been disciplined for holding views very similar to mine.

B.) If you read Achord & Dow’s Anthology Tigh you will see that Kinism is in no way a twisting of Reformed teaching. But maybe reading isn’t your strength?

C.) Confessional fidelity? LOL … this coming from a man who is in a denomination that long ago embraced women in office and now is toying with accepting sodomy. Sorry, Tigh, you passed the Confessional fidelity exit decades ago Bro.

Randy Rancid, Classis California South: “Kinism is the Americanization of apartheid.”

Bret responds,

Apartheid cannot be successful apart from force. I have written and taught in the past that I am opposed to the use of force believing instead in the freedom of assembly. We are seeing now that force isn’t necessary to achieve segregation. In the past week, I’ve read articles reporting how universities are having segregated graduation ceremonies as demanded by the students. It seems minorities want to graduate with their own people and I don’t blame them in the least.

I wonder if Randy Rancid believes that Korean Churches in the CRC or Hmong Churches in the CRC when they worship on Sundays are examples of “The Americanization of apartheid.”

Just another doltish thing to say by another chap who has repeatedly demonstrated his doltishness. (I know Randy.)