R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology) – Page 33

Machen Contra R2K … Christianity Opposes False Systems At A Thousand Points

“What has Christianity to do with education: What is there about Christianity which makes it necessary that there should be Christian schools? Very little, some people say. Christianity, they say, is a life, a temper of soul, not a doctrine or a system of truth; it can provide its sweet aroma, therefore, for any system which secular education may provide; its function is merely to evaluate whatever may be presented to it by the school of thought dominant at any particular time. This view of the Christian religion…is radically false. Christianity is, indeed, a way of life; but it is a way of life founded upon a system of truth. That system of truth is of the most comprehensive kind; it clashes with opposing systems at a thousand points. The Christian life cannot be lived on the basis of anti-Christian thought. Hence the necessity of the Christian school” (142,143).

“When we contemplate a type of Protestant orthodoxy that is content to take forlorn little shreds of Christian truth and tag them here and there upon a fundamentally anti-Christian or non-Christian education…[this is] humiliating to Protestantism” (143).

“Christianity should have an educational system of its own…Thus and thus only will the darkness of ignorance be dispelled and the light of Christian truth be spread abroad in the land” (144).

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

Machen was clearly a Christian social activist as this quote bears out. He saw that the Christian faith opposed pagan belief system at a thousand points. He understood that one of those points of contest was education. Today, other Reformed Church leaders are disagreeing with Machen on the totalistic nature of the contest between Christian thought and pagan thought. For example, recently Dr. G. D. Hart wrote,

“A Christian social activist is just as scary as a secular one. Thinking that Christians running things is better than non-Christians running those same things is frankly dishonest.”

What is humorous about this quote is that,

1.) Darryl is saying that Machen, as a social activist, was just as scary as Margaret Sanger as a social activist.

2.) Darryl, by implicitly insisting that Christians shouldn’t be social activists is doing his best impersonation of a social activist against Christian social activists.

Note that Machen, in the last quote provided, insists that Christianity should have its own educational system. Of course, such an idea is anathema to R2K, since for R2K, it is not possible for Education to be Christian since Education exists in the common realm. R2K may well refuse to ordain a modern day Machen for this kind of conviction that insists that Christian children should be educated with a distinctly Christian Education.

Machen On Education As The Most Important Part Of Human Life

“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.

Machen … The Non R2K Theologian Offering On Christian Education

(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.

Machen Thumps For Christian Schools — Contra 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.

Pointing out the Obvious

I picked at part of this quote in the previous entry but I just have to come back for another bite at the proverbial apple.

D. G. Hart writes,

“So if you are a legislator or president or judge and you hold office by virtue of being elected by Americans, not just the Christian ones, then don’t you have an obligation to execute your office in a way that is in the best interests of the people you serve (Americans and American-Christians)?”

1.) As a Christian public office holder, why would one posit, that acting in a non-Christian manner, in pursuing the best interest of non-Christian constituents would be a Christian thing to do?

2.) As a Christian public office holder, why would one not think, that acting in Christian manner, in pursuing the best interest of non-Christian constituents, would always be in the best interest of non-Christian constituents?

3.) By what standard are we defining “best interest?”

Darryl asks,

“But if you think that you are always going to have to act as a Christian in public office, then should you be allowed to hold power in a government that shows no religious preferences?”

1.) I guess every thought captive to the obedience of Christ is understood to have the addition “except in the public/common kingdom.”

2.) So much for “whatever is not done in faith is sin.”

3.) This quote suggests that if someone is voted in by all the Americans then there are times when it would be wrong to act in the best interest of Christians vis a vis the Christian constituents.

3.) Are we being told by a Dr. of the Church that it is wrong, at times, (by what Standard?) to act as a Christian when in a public capacity?

4.) If one is not acting as a Christian then how is one acting? Perhaps it is the case for Hart that it is Christian to not act as a Christian when you are a public official representing all the people?

You can’t make this stuff up.

Hart continues,

I get it. Politicians face ethical dilemmas but those are not the same as a personal preference or conviction on the one hand and what is best for everyone on the other. A Major League Baseball umpire may have grown up as a Phillies’ fan, but if he is behind the plate for a Phils-Pirates game, he’s supposed to call the same strike zone for both pitchers.

So doesn’t the same apply to Christian legislators who would seek public office in the greatest nation on God’s green earth? Don’t they have to act in the best interests of citizens who are both God-deniers and God-fearers?

1.) Only a Christian Umpire, or a Umpire influenced by a Christian worldview would think it important to call balls and strikes as “balls and strikes” in a Phillies vs. Pirates game. A non-Christian Umpire would call that outside pitch a third strike on Andrew McCutchen every time and be glad he was able to do so.

2.) Acting in the best interests of citizens who are both God-deniers and God-fearers would be to always act as a Christian.