A Rose By Any Other Name … (Labeling the Enemy)

Labels in war are important. One should desire to smear the enemy with a handle that is both accurate, insulting, and demeaning.

For example during the War of Northern aggression the North got away with labeling those who were faithful to the Constitution as “the Rebels.” During the English Civil war the Cavaliers, who were supporters of the Monarchy successfully stuck the label of “Roundhead” on their opponents.
You must understand that during the English Civil war and for a time afterwards, Roundhead was a term of derision, and in the New Model Army it was a punishable offence to call a fellow soldier a Roundhead. The Jews call their enemy “goyim” which is a smear, while at the same time being a accurate level from the Jewish perspective. The word “goy” has so much historical and linguistic baggage that it is obvious that it is a weaponized word. Goy exists in all kinds of combinations that it obvious that it is a slur label put on Jewish gentile enemies.  For example there are the obvious slurs – like “goyishe kopf,” or gentile brains, which suggests (generously) a dullard, or “shikker iz a goy,” a gentile is a drunkard. “Goyishe naches” describes the kinds of things that a Jew mockingly presumes only a gentile would enjoy, like hunting, sailing and eating white bread. Examples of the necessity to properly label one’s enemy with a pejorative handle in order to better reveal who they are and why they should be opposed are ubiquitous throughout history (Japs, Krauts, Jacobins, etc).

Now, I have no beef with this. It is what the lovers of their cause should do in order to demonize as much as possible the demonic enemy that is being faced. Jesus Himself did it when he called His enemies “White Washed Sepulchers full of dead men’s bones.” Further, I fully expect my enemy to try and do it to me and that is exactly what they have tried to do by calling me “racist,” or by trying to morph the words “Kinist” and “Racist” to mean the same thing.

Given all this it is not surprising that I do the same thing. When I came up with “R2K” once upon a time it was not meant as a compliment. It has become the short handle to refer to an extreme movement that while claiming to be Reformed because of its appeal to two Kingdom thinking is in all actually not Reformed because it has radicalized Reformed  two kingdom thinking into something that nobody Reformed throughout history would have ever recognized.

There have been other attempts to label R2K in a slurred but accurate fashion.

1.) E2K — For awhile people were using this to identify Radical Two Kingdom theology. It stands for Escondido Two Kingdom and its purpose is to hang around the neck of Westminster-Cal (located in Escondido, California) the dubious honor of having invented out of whole cloth Radical Two Kingdom “theology.” E2K, in my opinion, was a gentler and nicer way to say “Radical Two Kingdom,” and so in my opinion did not work as well as R2K, though it did have the advantage of screaming the location of the viper’s den every time it was used. Used enough it is possible that it would cause people to eventually say, “Can anything good come out of Escondido.” And of course, exceptions notwithstanding, the answer is “no.”

2.) Another attempt that has been floated in order to label R2K is “NL2K.” This stands for “Natural Law Two Kingdom,” and gets at the reality that Radical Two Kingdom is Thomistic in its origins and relies on Natural Law to get its Christ denying project off the ground. The problem is that most people don’t understand how wicked Natural Law is when it has gone to seed and so NL2K doesn’t pack enough pejorative punch.

Having said the above, I am not opposed to a better handle on Radical Two Kingdom than R2K if one can be found. Yesterday, a comment was left on Iron Ink hoping to advance just that idea. The beauty of “R2K” is that it is pithy, memorable, and accurate. The lack of the label “R2K” is that it fails somewhat as a entry level insult. Being the person I am, the pejorative side of things is always a stretch for me.

The chap who commented on Iron Ink angling for a new handle for “R2K” used the following admirable reasoning in order to advocate for a more razor edged handle to attach to R2K.  I cut and pasted his reasoning for your consideration below. If we can find a better handle to stick on R2K in order to better communicate their heretical and dangerous nature, I’m all for it. I have no pride when it comes to defeating this enemy.

Here is my commenter’s reasoning;

“At some level, Protestantism is fundamentally about wrestling for control of the state. Taking control of the state from Catholics was what made Protestantism.

The best way to undermine R2K is to start alluding to the state as Catholic. “Cathedral” , “Babylon”. As well as smearing R2K proponents with the association.

(Here the idea may be to refer to R2K as B2K {Babylon Two Kingdom} or C2K {Cathedral Two Kingdom}. {B2K = Babylon Two Kingdom has a nice ring to it} — BLM) 

Don’t let them call themselves Protestants. Real Protestants seek to control the “state”. Whether, it’s the Armish nation within a nation, or Christian Nationalists changing state law. We need a new label.

There’s been a failure to win the war for the dictionary. Young men filled with hormones create the vocabulary to control the conversation.”

I wonder if since I am willing to let go of R2K if that means I can consider myself a “Young man filled with hormones?”

I finish this entry by offering a few ideas of my own to replace R2K;

1.) Dumb sons of Bitches Two Kingdom = DSOB2K (probably too unwieldy & sexist, after all women can be DSOB2K also.)
2.) Heretical Two Kingdom = H2K
3.) Enemies of Christ Two Kingdom = EOC2K
4.) Retarded Two Kingdom = R2K (Nope … that would be confused w/ R2K)
5.) Anti-Christ Two Kingdom = AC2K

Anyway, were I a rich man, I’d turn this into a contest where someone could win a grand prize for coming up with the perfect language to label R2K and the whole movement.

Contra Mundum Journal Reviews “Saved To Be Warriors”

http://contra-mundum.org/index_htm_files/McAtte_R2kT.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2sBNBmFnRMagy00IlKH4J8NGe1gW2pAZCMq1G2YyyxH8rx7uHM_7O2kl4

Honestly, whoever wrote this review should write a book criticizing Radical Two Kingdom theology. The author of this piece is masterful at connecting the dots in the faults of Radical Two Kingdom theology. I suspect that this review of the book was written only as a platform to provide the reviewers convictions on the dangers of R2K. I am not opposed to that and am more than glad that the book I wrote could be used as a platform to put yet more lances through R2K.

I wish I know who the author was. Whoever it is, it is obvious that while I may have read my thousands of books so as to assault R2K, the reviewer has read his tens of thousands. The author of this review is informed and erudite and frankly in some instances it is clear that I should be learning from him and not y’all from me. Whoever this reviewer is, it is he who should be writing books attacking R2K. It really is a masterful piece of analysis on his part. I’d like to think whoever this is, he is 75 y/o Professor of theology who is retired humoring himself by reading the lesser lights out there.

He critiques me at several points, and at a couple of those points I might quibble, but the important point is that in the end he is attesting that R2K sucks wind as a theological model.

I might come back to this again with a few of my quibbles but I encourage all of you to read this review to get a even fuller understanding why R2K is heresy.

Announcing the Availability to Order, “Saved to be Warriors”

I am humbled to be able to announce the arrival of “Saved To Be Warriors,” my first, of what I hope to be many more to come, book. There is a link embedded in the link below that informs where the book can be ordered.

In a endorsing statement of the book, that is sure to bring Rev. Sacha Walicord grief from some quarters, Rev. Walicord writes,

“Woe unto the preacher who does not sound the alarm when the Good News is attacked from within the church, when the Law is pitted against the Gospel, and when Christ’s Crown Rights over all of life is disputed. Especially in this day and age when unity is elevated far above purity and when virtue signaling seems to be the order of the day, I am most grateful for this excellent contribution by Rev. Bret McAtee. This work robs the serious reader of every excuse not to stand up against a false and dangerous doctrine – one that is by no means a minor issue, but an assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself. I am most thankful that McAtee has answered the call and dealt with the assailants, not with cheap rhetoric, but by biblically interacting with their own words” 

Rev. Sacha Walicord

Saved to be Warriors

I Had A Dream The Same Night Chris Gordon Had A Dream

 As I sailed on the waters of the Great Lakes, I came to a certain place that seemed like an island, and I laid down in that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream…

I realized that the impulse of the Anabaptists to retreat from the world was exactly the spirit that had overcome me.

In my dream of trying to leave this world I found that there was no way to do that. Every action or lack of action on my part was impacting everything. How was I to be effective if I were to re-build the monastery? Cowardice was driving me and I suddenly remembered that no coward was ever saved. I realized that I must die to my desired retreatism and must once again seek to be a warrior for Christ. I realized that it was I myself, by my retreatist theology, who had created divisions and disunity in the church and that I couldn’t blame everyone else. I must die to my desire to be conquered by this present evil age. I realized that I too must die to myself, along with my own vision of how I want to see Christ’s kingdom come by not coming and by not contending for it.

It was Jesus who said that upon the confession that Jesus is Lord, Jesus would build His Church, and I realized that I was not confessing Jesus in the public square. I had forgotten that the early church had always been arrested for sedition and not because they were worshiping secretly in the catacombs. I realized that, truth be told, I care more about not being persecuted for righteousness sake than I cared for aborted babies.

Back to Tekonsha, Mi, confident in my calling to be a witness to wicked potentates so as to be as a shining star in a dark universe, I decided to go.

 

The Point of Linkage Between the R2K Dispute & The Kinism Dispute

“The R2K crowd is willing to cede the point that Christ’s spiritual kingdom or mediatorial kingdom is synonymous with the church. This is the classic non roman position. But they are unwilling to admit that Christ’s kingdom of power exists at all. The Kuyperians are unwilling to admit that there is a distinction between the kingdom of grace and the kingdom of power at all. Thus they are unable to draw a distinction between grace and the natural order. Or if they do nature is bad and so must be eliminated. Grace eats up nature and your church membership becomes more fundamental to your being than your father’s blood.

Both are errors. Neither comport with magisterial Protestantism or confessional Christianity.”

Robert Hoyle

Over the years here at Iron Ink two of my main foils (though not my only adversaries) have been R2K and “Christian” Alienism. What Robert offers above shows the reason for that. There is linkage between these two errors. Now, Robert and I do not agree on Natural Law scholastic theology but all theologians talk about the relationship between nature and grace. It has been a Reformed motif over the centuries that “grace restores/renews nature.” 

The CREC wants grace at the expense of nature. This is seen in Doug Wilson’s silly diatribes against biblical Kinism…. well, except when it is his Kin who are at stake. When it is his kin at stake then suddenly we begin to smell ethnic puffery. Take for example these two paragraphs from Pope Douglas read back to back;

I.) Doug “I hate white Kinism” Wilson

“We of course reject all such ethnic pufferies, and we do so with just the right amount of loathing…By making absolutely everything about superficial ethnicity indicators, it turns out that some have learned this lesson in reactionary ways, and have embraced their superficial ethnicity indicators. Instead of being ASHAMED of this made-up reality, they became PROUD of this made-up reality. And that’s how we got a collection of Proud Boys going down to heckle folks at an Antifa rally, with the Boys in question made up of Scots, Norwegians, Germans, and a Ukrainian, arms locked, singing a Celtic war song. This is nothing more than playing tribal dress-ups, or ethnic cosplay, and all of it based on nothing more than a shared susceptibility to sunburn. ” –Doug Wilson

II.) Doug “I love me some Jewish Kinism” Wilson

“My affection for Israel is personal, in addition to being theological and political. My wife’s great-great-grandfather was Rabbi Cohn, one of my co-grandfathers is a Christian Jew, my kids and grandkids have cousins who are Israeli, and according to AncestryDNA, I myself am 2% European Jewish. Nancy is 11% European Jew, her mother 26%. What all this amounts to is that our family would be much more involved on an active personal level if terrorists overran Israel than we would be if terrorists overran Vermont.” — Douglas Wilson

At least in the first paragraph nature is just so much “ethnic puffery” that is to be met with just the right loathing of all those ethnic pufferers who share the common trait of susceptibility to sunburn. However, in the second paragraph its all bagels and matzo ball soup serious.

The CREC would replace the ethnic puffery of the first paragraph with ecclesiocentrism and grace. White boy summer ethnic puffery is not important. What is important for the CREC (at least for white boy summer) is grace over nature unless, of course unless all your grandchildren are descendants of Rabbi Cohn. This may be accounted by the wide spread admission of ecclesiocentrism that is found in the CREC.  What is important per the Moscow boys is not the family (the ground zero for ethnic considerations). What is important is the Church. Apparently, for the CREC types it is in the Church we live and move and have our being.

However, not to be outdone, R2K comes along with their famous condescending “tut, tut, tutting,” to remind us that the CREC is wrong. It is not grace eclipsing nature. Rather, it is grace and nature set in dualistic compartmentalization from one another. This explains why the grand Pu-bah of R2K can say things like;

“God is not redeeming the cultural activities and institutions of this world”…“Those who hold a traditional Protestant view of justification consistently should not find a redemptive transformationist perspective attractive.”

David Van Drunen — Westminster Seminary California Professor
“Living in God’s Two Kingdoms”, pp. 13–21.

One readily sees here that grace and nature have been compartmentalized from one another. Grace is an upper story reality and nature is a lower story reality and never the twain shall meet institutionally speaking.

So to reduce to a Venn diagram

CREC = Grace Supplants Nature (No unapproved of ethnic puffery allowed)
Materialism = Nature is all there is (The Cosmos is all there is)
R2K = Grace and Nature exist in a dualistic ying & yang (Secularism forever)
Rome = Nature must come under Grace for Nature to count
(This explains why for Rome everything had to come into the Church to be Holy.)
Animism = Spiritual is all there is

To the contrary, for right-minded people it is the case that the Church is a central expression of the Kingdom but it is not the only expression of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God, being among us, or in our midst (Luke 17:21) is a Kingdom that is not only redemptive as it works in the Church with its means of Grace in the Word and Sacrament unto the end of opening and closing the Kingdom, but the Kingdom is also authoritarian as it works as under Christ’s Kingship through redeemed Kingdom men, who, by the means of taking every thought captive to Christ and doing all things to the glory of God unto, labor unto the end of the ongoing expansion of the already present Kingdom of God so that one day the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
The model is found in the Incarnation. Taking seriously the Council of Chalcedon’s definition of the incarnation is how one avoids going off the road into either the R2k ditch or the CREC ditch which in the end both lead to Gnosticism by either over materialization or over spiritualization.