Category: R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology)

“Now if the biblical revelation is ultimate for thought, outlook, and practice, we must readily see the implications for education… In a word, education must be Christian… [This] means that the subject matter of the classroom must derive its interpreting principles from the Christian revelation” (368,369).

“How indispensable to education from the earliest years, even before the child arrives at school age, is the word of Gen.1:1…No question is more urgent than that of whence… Whence the universe in which we live? Correlative is the doctrine of God’s providence… [Thus] unless the school fosters the fear of the Lord as the beginning of knowledge and of wisdom, the influence of the home and of the church, even when it is to a high degree exemplary, tends to be negated, and it is common knowledge and experience that in many cases the school has undermined what home and church have sought to establish and develop” (369).

“Education, apart from any conception of man as to his distinguishing identity, purpose, and destiny, is inconceivable…If education is to be Christian, it must be based upon and conducted in terms of the Christian view of man. If not, it is not Christian, and if not Christian it is alien and opposed to Christian interests…If boys and girls…are in the image of God, if that is their identity, their chief end cannot be anything less than to glorify God and to enjoy him. And education that is destitute of this objective, or has allowed it to suffer eclipse has lost its direction” (370,371).

“Christianity gives us a world view; it enunciates principles which underlie all our thinking if we are Christian; it prescribes the governing conceptions in terms of which we are to interpret reality. Christianity is not something tacked on to our world view; it is itself a world view. And the central features of our Christian faith are conditioned by, and in turn condition, that world view” (372).

The sum is: “The whole range and content of education must be God-centered; that is, God must be the unifying principle and the interpreting principle of the whole curriculum” (374).

John Murray (1898-1975)
“Christian Education,” in Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol.1, Banner of Truth, 1976, pgs.367-374.

“In the political and social discussions of the day, God’s law has ceased to be regarded as a factor that deserves to be reckoned with at all…[But] of one thing we can be sure—a nation that tramples thus upon the law of God…is headed for destruction” (140,141).

A “very ancient principle in the field of education…has been one of the chief enemies of human liberty for several thousand years—the principle, namely, that education is an affair essentially of the State, that education must be standardized for the welfare of the whole people and put under the control of government, that personal idiosyncrasies should be avoided…It is a very ancient thing—this notion that the children belong to the State, that their education must be provided for by the State in a way that makes for the State’s welfare. But that principle, I think you will find if you examine human history, is inimical at every step to liberty” (87,88).

“I hope therefore…that we may return to the principle of freedom for individual parents in the education of their children in accordance with their conscience…But let us be perfectly clear about one thing—if liberty is not maintained with regard to education, there is no use trying to maintain it in any other sphere. If you give the bureaucrats the children, you might just as well give them everything else…No, we do not want a Federal Department of Education and we do not want, in any form whatever, the slavery that a Federal Department of Education would bring” (98).

“Uniformity in education under central control it seems to me is the worst fate into which any country can fall…parents have a right to educate children as they please…education is essentially not a matter of the State at all” (100-102).

We “are dealing with the most important part of human life when we are dealing with education” (114).

J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)
Education, Christianity, and the State
Edited by John Robbins, The Trinity Foundation, Jefferson, Maryland, 1987.

Note, with the very last quote in this batch that Machen has said the Education is the most important part of human life. This is not a statement that is inconsistent with Christianity as the R2K boys might say. The R2K boys, given their beliefs about the dichotomous nature of reality, should be appalled that any Christian Theologian would say that, we “are dealing with the most important part of human life when we are dealing with education,” since for the R2K boys education belongs not to the grace realm (which would be their “most important”) but to the common realm.

This reveals, again, that Machen was R2K the way that Jeffery Dahmer was a chef.

Machen could say what he said because he realized, unlike the R2K boys, that education is primarily a religious enterprise. Machen understood that Education was definitely not a so called “common realm” concern. The education of children is driven by religious considerations and presuppositions and any Christian who says otherwise, may well be saved, but nevertheless remains a damn fool who shouldn’t be listened to on much of anything no matter how many degrees he has behind his names.

Also, we should zoom in on Machen’s statement here about the dangers of Christians giving over their children to the State for schooling. Machen realized that should we give up our children to the State then it will do little good to hold on to our guns, income, or anything else vis-a-vis the State. If the pagan State is the tutor and the “en locus parentis” of our children for upwards to 8 hours a day then Christians will not normatively keep our children for our undoubted catholic Christian faith. If you give your children to the State to be saturated, soaked, and marinated in a pagan worldview, via the government schools you can not expect the children to become anything but reflections of the religious pagan education in which they were saturated, soaked, and marinated. This is especially so when one adds to the the prison time government school influence upon God’s covenant seed the impact of a pagan culture.

When we baptize our children part of what parents hear in the Baptismal charge is that Baptism is not to be used as a superstition. Yet, when we baptize our children and then send them to Government schools what else can the practice of Baptism have been by the parents, but a superstition that was supposed to be a talisman to ward off the evil that comes from government school education?

Dr. J. Gresham Machen was a prophet who being now dead, still speaks.

(As) “a matter of fact the religion of the Christian man embraces the whole of his life…everything that he does he should now do as a child of God…[The] bearing of truth, the meaning of truth, the purpose of truth, even in the sphere of mathematics, seem entirely different to the Christian from that which they seem to the non-Christian; and that is why a truly Christian education is possible only when Christian conviction underlies not a part, but all, of the curriculum of the school. True learning and true piety go hand in hand, and Christianity embraces the whole of life…I can see little consistency in a type of Christian activity which preaches the gospel on the street corners and at the ends of the earth, but neglects the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism” (81,82).

“Another line of attack upon liberty has appeared in the advocacy of a Federal department of education. Repeatedly this vicious proposal has been introduced in Congress.”

“Uniformity in education, it seems to me, is one of the worst calamities into which any people can fall…Uniformity of education under one central governmental department would be a very great calamity indeed.”

J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)
Education, Christianity, and the State — 81, 82, 71, 73,74
Edited by John Robbins, The Trinity Foundation, Jefferson, Maryland, 1987.

Of course when a “Christianity” is embraced that insists that Christians should not take every thought captive to make them obedient to Christ, because many thoughts exist in a common square where it is not possible to take those thoughts as captive to Christ since they are “common thoughts,” then the consequence every time is, what Machen calls, a “neglecting of the children of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism.” R2K, by its very definition, is a neglecting of all God’s people of the covenant by abandoning them to a cold and unbelieving secularism. In point of fact, R2K finds a cold and unbelieving secularism to be what is optimal for the common realm because all that is possible for the common realm is secularism.

Listen to Machen and abandon R2K.

“A monopolistic system of education controlled by the State is far more efficient in crushing our liberty than the cruder weapons of fire and sword. Against this monopoly of education by the State the Christian school brings a salutary protest; it contends for the right of parents to bring up their children in accordance with the dictates of their consciences and not in the manner prescribed by the State.”

J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)
Education, Christianity, and the State — pg. 68
Edited by John Robbins, The Trinity Foundation, Jefferson, Maryland, 1987.