Category: Apologetics

Michael Scott Horton & Cyrus Ingerson Scofield On The Imprecatory Psalms

“The imprecatory Psalms, invoking God’s judgment on enemies, are appropriate on the lips of David and the martyrs in heaven. However, they are entirely out of place on the lips of Christians today, guided as we are not by the ethics of intrusion but by the ethics of common grace.”

Michael Horton
Systematic Theology, p 961-2.

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“The imprecatory Psalms are the cry of the oppressed in Israel for justice a cry appropriate and right in the early people of God, . . . but a cry unsuited for the church, a heavenly people who have taken their place with a rejected and crucified Christ.”

Scofield Reference Bible, p.599
Note on Luke 9:52 55

Now it is possible that someone, like Dr. Brian Lee, might protest that the the positions of Horton and the Scofield Bible differ significantly. Someone might note that Horton says the imprecatory psalms are appropriate on the lips of the martyrs in heaven, while Scofield says they are unsuited for a heavenly people.  However, the truth of the matter is that these quotes don’t differ in the least.

When Scofield writes “they are unsuited for a heavenly people,” one must keep in mind that in Scofieldianism the “heavenly people” stands in contrast to the “earthly people.” The difference is between the people of heaven (The Church) and the people of the earthly kingdom (Jews). With that knowledge we understand that Horton and Scofield are two choir members singing from the same sheet of music. They are saying the exact same thing.

Scofield is NOT saying that the Martyrs in heaven can not use Imprecatory praying.

Who Knows The Aims of Socialism Better … Vladimir Lenin or Bojidar Marinov?

[F]rom its very beginning, to this very day, mainstream Marxism has been kinist and racist to the core, looking at genetic makeup – together with many other material factors – as determining the cultural level of a group of people. From Marx’s complaints that “Jews undermine the European civilization by mixing European blood with Negro blood,” through Stalin’s purges of whole ethnic groups due to “genetic backwardness,” through the war in Yugoslavia (where the Marxist incentive was the superior genetic makeup of the Serbs), to our modern black racism (on Marxist grounds), Marxism has never been anything else except racist and kinist. There has never been any genetic integrationism in Marxism, but to the contrary, Marxism has always divided peoples by genetic composition, just like the kinists (d)o.

Bojidar Marinov

“The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together, but to merge them….”

Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

Of course the words of Lenin directly contradicts the claims of Bojidar.  Who should we believe on this matter? Should we believe Bojidar or Lenin concerning the aim of socialism?

Now we admit that Lenin also advocated national revolution and even encouraged nationalism in the service of overthrowing what he characterized as “colonial” oppression. How can we reconcile that with Lenin’s desire to merge all nations?

Once again, Lenin himself gives the answer:

“… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

National liberation then was a transitory factor. It was a prelude to a working class movement within the nation, and its ultimate aim was socialism and so the amalgamation of all nations into one. Communists would support such movements, but at the same time they would seek to obtain control over them and, where possible, turn them into workers’ and peasants’ revolutions.

When these elements controlled the state apparatus, then the possibility of unifying that nation with the rest of the socialist world could be realized.

So clearly Bojidar Marinov, once again, is demonstrated as not being, in the least, a trustworthy source on this issue. Communists, contrary Marinov, were Internationalists and desired the erasure of all distinct borders and peoples. Communists were never Kinists except as a dialectical tactic to arrive at the higher communist good of total amalgamation.

Don’t take my word … just read Vladimir Lenin. If you don’t like Lenin here consider Richard Wurmbrand’s analysis of the same issue. This analysis also overturns the errors of Mr. Marinov’s understanding,

Wurmbrand on the subject:

“Hess had taught Marx that socialism was inseparable from internationalism. Marx writes in his Communist Manifesto that the proletariat has no fatherland. In his Red Catechism, Hess mocks the fatherland notion of the Germans, and he would have done the same with the fatherland notion of any other European nation. Hess criticized the Erfurt program of the German Social-Democrat Party for its unconditional recognition of the national principle. But Hess is an internationalist with a difference: Jewish patriotism must remain. He writes, 

‘Whoever denies Jewish nationalism is not only an apostate, a renegade in the religious sense but a traitor to his people and to his family. Should it prove true that the emancipation of the Jews is incompatible with Jewish nationalism, then the Jew must sacrifice emancipation… The Jew must be, above all, a Jewish patriot.’ 

I agree with Hess’ patriotic ideas to the extent that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I am for every kind of patriotism – that of the Jews, the Arabs, the Germans, the Russians, the Americans. Patriotism is a virtue if it means the endeavor to promote economically, politically, spiritually, and religiously the welfare of one’s own nation, provided that it is done in friendship and cooperation with other nations.”

~Richard Wurmbrand, Marx & Satan, pp.54-55

The point that Wurmbrand is making is that Marxism is Internationalist in its flavor. Its aim is for all colors, creeds, and nations to bleed into one, except for the Jew. This of course, is contrary to what Mr. Marinov claims.

As an aside, isn’t it interesting that much of the modern Church has much the same goal, and uses much the same language as Lenin? In much of the modern church in the West today you can hear some preacher somewhere on any given Sunday morning  say things like; ‘the aim of socialism Christianity is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them and only the Gospel of Jesus Christ can do that.’

If you hear that remind yourself that your hearing Lenin and not Christ.

 

The Hyphenated Life As A Basic Religious Conviction

“After examining myself and studying historical subjects I am not so convinced that religion is so basic to a person’s identity….

In other words, life as a Christian is complicated. The best word to describe that is one that the intellectual historian, David Hollinger, coined in his book Postethnic America— hyphenation. To recognize that people (even Christians) are a mix of different responsibilities and loyalties is to admit that ‘most individuals live in many circles simultaneously and that the actual living of any individual life entails a shifting division of labor between the several ‘we’s’ of which the individual is part.’”

Hyphenated Greetings

Dr. D. G. Hart

 

1.) In this quote Dr. Hart demonstrates, once again, how his religion bleeds into his identity. His religious conviction is that religion is not so basic to a person identity. Now, inasmuch as that statement is a religious conviction that statement of his religious conviction creates for him his “hyphenated life,” where there are official zones where religious impact must be considered and official zones were religion must not be considered. But, make no mistake, it is his religion of compartmentalized religion that is basic to Darryl’s identity. His whole reason for existence is characterized by his zeal for his religion.

2.) The implication of Hart’s last sentence above is that there are some areas where the Christian individual must consider Christ and other areas where the Christian individual can dispatch with considering Christ. For example, according to Darryl, why should a Christian have to consider Christ when he is cheering for the Tigers at a Tigers ballgame? I suppose this means that when Darryl attends a Tigers game he can scream invective at the Umpires for bad calls since that is part of the ballgame. After all … it is a hyphenated life and what does Christ have to do with rooting as a fan at Tigers games?

3.) It is true that Christians have many roles in life but to suggest that any of those roles can be taken up apart from consideration of Christ is just not wholesome.

 

The Old Testament Saints Were Not Holy?

Hebrews 3:1 Therefore, [a]holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly vocation, consider the[b]Apostle and high Priest of our [c]profession Christ Jesus:

“What strikes me by this adjective, ‘holy,’ is that under the Old Testament you weren’t always necessarily holy. There was a kind of covenantal holiness which referred to membership, but in terms of Leviticus and Numbers only the priests were holy. The people were not. And he just has told us that Jesus is our high priest who’s the one who sanctifies and we are the ones being sanctified in chapter two and now [Christ] has made this propitiation. To say ‘holy brothers’ is granting them a new covenant status that you could not attain in the Old Testament, unless you were a priest. And so, he really honors them with this and really builds upon this idea that Christ is this high priest who’s made this propitiation, and now…. ‘holy brothers’.”

– Zach Keele, OPC minister
From the White Horse Inn radio broadcast
Commenting on Hebrews 3:1

Just a few observations

1.) The OT seems to contradict Rev. Keele about the Old Testament saints being holy.

Leviticus 11:44-45 For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground.45 For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”

Leviticus 19:2 Speak unto all the Congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them,Ye shall be [a]holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

2.) If the Old Testament saints weren’t holy then could they have been saved? And if they were saved, how were they saved without being holy and without the Lord Christ.

3.) It has always been a Reformed staple that the OT saints were saved the same way the NT saints were saved, and that was by the propitiatory work of the Lord Christ. The OT saints saw that from afar through the sacrifices while we, as NT saints had the reality that was *proleptic and promissory for the OT saints.  Still, if the OT saints were saved (and they were) then the only way they were saved was by their looking forward to the finished work of Christ that proleptic to them.

4.) Remember that “Holy” simply means “set apart for a unique usage.” Are we really being told that Israel and the Israel of Israel were not a set apart people? This is not well thought out by Rev. Keele.

5.) Hence the statement above is a significant departure from Reformed theology in favor of some kind of Baptist / Dispensational / R2K  hermeneutic where the standard Reformed hermeneutic of continuity has been replaced in favor of a hermeneutic of discontinuity. This quote does extreme violence to what it means to be Reformed.


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* proleptic — the assigning of a person, event, etc., to a period earlier than the actual one; the representation of something in the future as if it already existed or had occurred;

Peter The Anabaptist

“Division rules in the childish world of the old covenant (cf. Galatians 4), the world split in two by the cut of circumcision, a world of tribes and tongues and nations and peoples. To be content with division is to revert to that old world. Division is a form of Judaizing.”

Peter Liethart
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/09/maturing-into-one

 

1.) What I’m hearing here is that

a.) The Old Testament God wanted distinctions and proper divisions but the New Testament God has changed and He doesn’t want distinctions and divisions of tribes, tongues, nations and peoples. Marcionism anyone?

b.) The death of Jesus was to the end of creating a Monistic God and egalitarian world where, in the words of the famous Band, U2, “all colors bleed into one.”

2.) Is it too terribly haughty of me to prefer  the epistemologically self conscious Jacobin theologians over the ones who are merely ignorantly Jacobin?

3.) Is the comment, “Division is a form of Judaizing,” an egghead academic way of translating Rodney King’s, “Can’t we all just get along”?

4.) Wasn’t it the Radical Reformation that insisted that the division between clergy and laity was a sinful division? “Peter the Anabaptist” has a certain ring to it.

5.) If “Peter the Anabaptist” is correct then we must conclude the following,

a.) the Protestant insistence on translation into all the vulgar tongues of the nations was a Judaizing tendency. The  Reformation was compromised from the beginning.

b.)  If division is Judaizing then the Protestant Reformation was sin as it divided from Rome.

c.) If division is Judaizing, the distinct historic creeds as they have been embraced by distinct Reformed denominations have been sin.

d.) God involved Himself in a Judaizing tendency on the plains of Shinar.

6.) Dr. Leithart is here ruling exactly opposite the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. The position there advocated by the Judaizers was an absolute and uncompromising unity that demanded that the Gentiles become cultural Jews in order to be Christian. The apostles repudiated that idea. Which is to say that Dr. Leithart is actually siding with the Judaizers but calling the Jerusalem Divines the Judaizers. This is worst then Jacobinism. This is devilry.

7.) One wonders if this is a kind of Hindu Christianity where all divisions and distinctions are Maya (illusion).

8.) Unity without diversity is Uniformity and Unitarianism. In Unitarianism all must become as one as the one god that is served. This Leithartian Unitarianism seems to be trying to immanentize the eschaton so that the idea of “the other” is lost in a sea of oneness. It is Van Till’s illustration of the man of water, seeking to climb out of a ocean of water, on a ladder of water, into a heavens of water come to life.