Over at the Bayly Blog
http://baylyblog.com/blog/2013/06/theological-critique-escondido-two-kingdoms-theology-viii-machen-was-culture-warrior
Rev. Bayly gets in the R2K boys’ Kitchen. Of course we have been writing the very same thing for years now. See excerpts below.
However, one key thing that needs to be taken from Rev. Bayly’s article and my own excerpts is that the R2K chaps are hack Historians when they try to claim Machen as “proto-R2K.” Machen wasn’t proto R2K and for Historian, Dr. D. G. Hart, and the rest of the “R2K Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight” to suggest that Machen was R2K is worse then disinformation and propaganda. It is Libel of the dead.
Historians are supposed to deal with all the information on a person’s life and seek to either harmonize it or leave the contradictions exposed. Historians are not supposed to cut and paste someone’s life to fit their preconceived political agenda. (And R2K is a political agenda, despite its constant screaming that Churchmen shouldn’t be involved in disputes concerning political agendas.)
So, a hat tip to Rev. Bayly for exposing R2K again.
See below links and excerpted portions from Iron Ink previous engagements with R2K in years past for supplementary material that supports the Bayly Blog’s exposure of R2K.
October 18th 2011
This post title is “J. Gresham Machen … Does Not Know, Nor Has Ever Heard Of R2K”
Christianity and Culture – “Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the Gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the Gospel. For making it subservient, religious emotion is not enough, intellectual labor is also necessary. And that labor is being neglected. The Church has turned to easier tasks. And now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life.”
J. Gresham Machen
1912 centennial commemorative lecture at Princeton Seminary
“Instead of obliterating the distinction between the Kingdom and the world, or on the other hand withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically to make the world subject to God.”
~J. Gresham Machen
June 30th 2009
This post title is “Cleaning Out The Outhouse”
Recently Steve Zrimec over at “The Confessional Outhouse” was bored enough to pay attention to something I wrote on Iron Ink. Steve Zrimec is, in many respects, the theological antithesis to myself. He is the Joker to my Batman … the Stalin to my Churchill … the ying to my yang.
I thought I would go ahead and respond to some of Steve’s prattling and so provide a service by cleaning the the Outhouse.
Steve started by quoting one of his heroes, and a sometime foil of mine, Dr. D. G. Hart. This quote comes from Hart’s book on Machen. (Which I have read.)
“Machen was indeed concerned about the dangers that “cultural modernism” posed to traditional faith. But he was even more worried about the “modernism” of American Protestantism and the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested. For Machen, the moves by Protestants to “modernize” the faith—and not the efforts of “cultural modernists” to move beyond Christianity—comprised the greatest danger to Christianity. For by refashioning Christianity mainline Protestants hoped to maintain the churches’ role as cultural guardian. But in the process, Machen believed, they had confused influence with faithfulness. In fact, he held that theological integrity and cultural authority were inversely related: a theology eager for public influence invariably compromised the Christian faith, while a principled theology could at best benefit society indirectly.”
The problem here for gentlemen like Hart and Zrimec is that they continue to be confused on the issue of culture. Hart speaks here of Machen being more concerned about the “modernism” of American Protestantism and the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested than he was over the dangers of cultural modernism. But what Hart misses is that these two concerns are not unrelated. The same alien theological premises that were driving cultural modernism were driving the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested. Machen could inveigh against the dangers of both because the dangers were one at the root. The attempts by protestants to modernize grew out of the same soil that found cultural modernists attempting to move beyond Christianity. Zrimec and Hart can’t really believe that the anti-supernatural premises of the protestant modernists were unrelated to the anti-supernatural premises of those wanting to move beyond Christianity.
It is perfectly understandable that Machen was more concerned about the unfaithfulness in the Church over and above the unfaithfulness in the culture since a trained mind would understand that there would be no recalling the culture from its modernists assumptions if the Church became wrapped in those same modernist assumptions.
The only place I would correct Machen (or perhaps correct Hart’s conclusions on Machen) is on Hart’s final observation. The scripture is full of prophets who were eager for their theology to have public influence who did not compromise. Has Hart never read the major or minor prophets? History likewise is full of men who were eager for their theology to have public influence who did not compromise. Has Hart never read of Hus, or Wycliffe and the Lollards or Bunyan?
I would say instead that a theology eager for public influence invariably compromises the Christian faith, when the theology eager for public influence is willing to accommodate to the culture as the Protestant re-fashioners of Christianity were doing during the modernist controversy.
This quote from Hart by Zrimec does nothing to overthrow anything I said that was quoted at the Confessional Outhouse. Indeed, I would say this quote supports my analysis of the relationship of cult and culture that Zrimec cites dismissively.
“Machen’s cultural concerns, thus, made him in the 1920s a reluctant ally of secular intellectuals but in the 1930s would cost him the support of the fundamentalists. Like Machen, though for different reasons, cultural modernists also bristled under mainstream Protestantism’s moral code, rejected its cheery estimate of human nature and the universe, and opposed its bid to Christianize American society. The subtext of Machen’s theological critique of Protestant modernism—that the churches had no business meddling in society—was good news to the secularists who thought that America’s Protestant ethos impeded intellectual and cultural life. Fundamentalists, in contrast, were virtually deaf to Machen’s ideas about the relationship between Christianity and culture. To most conservatives throughout the 1920s, Machen was a champion of orthodoxy who had reestablished the theological foundations for Christian civilization in America. By the 1930s, however, his understanding of the church’s limited role in public life began to alienate fundamentalists. When Machen’s efforts to reform the Presbyterian Church were finally thwarted and he withdrew in 1936 to form a new denomination, his new church attracted few fundamentalists. They stayed away at least in part because they, unlike Machen, shared with modernizing Protestants the belief that Christian values constituted the bedrock of American society.”
D.G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America
Machen’s conviction on the relationship between Christianity and culture had a strong flavor of the classical liberalism that Machen grew up under as a son of the South. Machen was as opposed to using the State to force a top down regime of Christianity as we was opposed to using the State to force a top down regime of pagansim. Any reading of Machen’s writings on education easily confirms this. The difference between Machen and the fundamentalists can more be accounted by Machen’s embrace of classical liberalism vs. the fundamentalists embrace of the idea of using the state to force their agenda. Machen, like any good theonomist today, desired men to turn to Christ and a Christian social ethic apart from any governmental coercion.
Machen understood, as Hart says above, that Christianity’s influence should be indirect. Indirect in the sense that people take up Christianity by the coercive will of God and not by the coercive will of the State. Indirect in the sense that a self governing Christian people will, by default, live out Christian principles as they move in the public square.
But all because Christian influence is indirect doesn’t mean it isn’t potent, real or substantial and neither does it mean that those who see no Christian influence in the broader culture shouldn’t decry the absence of that indirect influence or that Christians shouldn’t advocate the resurrection of that indirect influence, or that Christians shouldn’t complain that the current Church refuses to trace out what these indirect influences look like where a vibrant Christianity exists.
Steve Zrimec wrote in conclusion
“In other words, while natural religion is important to make the world go ‘round, Christianity serves another, more counter-intuitive purpose, namely the reconciliation of sinners to God. Arguably, this really was the supreme contribution Machen made: true religion has no obvious implication for or direct bearing on the cares of this world; it is irrelevant to the traditions of men no matter how he conceives of them and no matter how important they may be to this present life; it does not make bad people (or their cultures) good or good people (or their cultures) better; while it certainly has one resident within it, Christianity is certainly not a way of life.”
All natural religions seek to reconcile sinners to god. The problem is that the god is an idol and the reconciliation to that false idol leaves one unreconciled to the God of the Bible. Steve seems to miss this idea.
Also note that Steve’s gnostic Christianity leaves the corporeal material realm where we do most of our living in the hands of some natural religion. Steve concedes that natural religion makes the world go around and by so doing implies that supernatural religion doesn’t accomplish that. In point of fact both natural religion and supernatural religion are both in the business of reconciliation and in making the world go around.
Steve also in the blockquote above completely rules out the power of the Holy Spirit to remake men increasingly in the image of God. Christianity, according to Steve, does not make bad people good and this despite the constant calls of Scripture to put off the old man and put on the new man created in the image of God.
True religion, “having no obvious implication for or direct bearing on the cares of this world,” does not have anything to say on how families raise their children, on what Marriage looks like, on how children should be educated, or on how a Christian people comport themselves in the public square. Steve’s eschatology is all “not yet” and is gnostically unrealized.
Steve finishes by throwing a Right hay maker,
“Not everyone seems convinced that Machen was onto something though. Contra Machen, the suggestion here is that Christianity creates culture and that good culture is dependent upon an unadulterated Christianity.
If this isn’t an example of “alienated fundamentalism” I’m hard-pressed to know what is.”
Steve’s theology takes us to cultural relativism. Since all of culture is driven by natural religion it makes little difference which of the natural religion is in the drivers seat. There is no way to adjudicate between good culture and not good culture since it is all natural religion driven.
If Steve’s theology isn’t an example of gnostic fundamentalism I’m hard pressed to know what is.
November 08, 2012
R2K Fundamentalism
Darryl Hart writes to one Doug Sowers,
You are doing what Machen’s critics did, assuming he was in favor or drunkenness because he opposed Prohibition.
This is why you are a fundamentalist. You only see one side of an issue. Gay marriage bad. But legislating gay marriage, or the church taking a stand on gay marriage involves laws and officers and members in a host of organizational relationships that go beyond the morality of homosexuality. But for you, it’s a black and white issue and you don’t care what comes with efforts to oppose it, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny.
Bret responds to Dr. D. Gnostic Hart,
1.) Notice how Dr. Hart has now embraced the position of Irons and Bordow who advocate theoretical Christians advancing the it is permissible for Homosexuality or Bestiality to be approvingly legislated for the public square even if they themselves (Bordow, Irons, and now Hart) don’t advocate it or believe it themselves. If this is not public square anti-nomianism then none exists.
2.) Notice how Dr. Hart places politically active “Christians” in the public square, who advance the permissibility of a social order that allows and gives place for deviancy and perversion (as defined by Scripture), under the umbrella of “Liberty.” Of course this is to redefine liberty as license.
3.) Dr. Hart invokes Machen but Hart is comparing apples and sodomites here when he compares Machen’s opposition to Prohibition and Biblical Christians opposition to other Christians advocating the permissibility of perversion in the public square (even if those same Christians personally oppose such perversion). The reason this is a apple and sodomite comparison is that Machen’s position was that he could not oppose something that God’s word permitted. God’s word does not forbid the usage of alcohol and therefore Machen knew he could not support prohibiting what God allowed. Darryl is trying to advance a position where it is wrong to oppose, in the public square, a prohibition that God details in His word. It is not the same thing for Machen to oppose supporting (Prohibition) what God didn’t prohibit and Biblical Christians opposing for the public square what God opposes. As I said, Darryl’s comparison is Apples and Sodomites.
4.) Of course it is Dr. D. Gnostic Hart who is the Fundamentalist here. Darryl is a Gnostic Fundamentalist. He is only seeing the Gnostic side of the issue. The implication of what Darryl is invoking is the idea that it is perfectly acceptable for a Christian Doctor to preform Abortions if he is “in a host of organizational relationships” (such as a Hospital that does abortions) “that go beyond the morality of abortion.” For Darryl this is a White and Gray issue. White — Personally and individually these things bad. Gray — In the Public square these things require “liberty.” Darryl doesn’t care what comes with efforts to oppose perversion, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny that forces Christians to accept these perversions in the public square and forces them to accept people who accept the acceptability of these perversions in the Church (even if those people don’t themselves approve them personally and individually).