R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology) – Page 7

R. Scott Clark’s Opining on Christian Nationalism Rejected — Part II

Just as Machen, though sick with pneumonia was bound and determined to keep his word to travel to South Dakota to preach and support a new Presbyterian work there, so I have lifted myself up out of my post-operative open heart surgery rest and recovery regimen in order to answer the absolute inanities of R. Scott Clark and Keven DeYoung on the subject of Christian Nationalism. Aren’t you impressed?

There is nothing quite so as stirring and enlivening to one’s spirit and health has to have the opportunity to lance, like so many piece of vegetable and beef on a shish-kabob, the non-Christian musings of the highly functioning lobotomized clergy class.

R. Scott Clark notes the desire of DeYoung to have “some form of Christian Nationalism,” and then as the cheek to say that no one has ever answered his previous queries as to what it means to modify “nationalism” with “Christian.” Clark, ever the intellectual autistic that he is, insists that no one has ever given him a coherent response as to what it means to speak of “Christian” plumbing or “Christian” math. All I can say here is that if he has seen no coherent response to this it is because he is looking with his eyes shut. Here is my response to that question a couple years ago. It is not the first time I have answered this question for he who runs “The Heidelfog.”

Not Getting R. Scott Clark’s Inability to Get The Obvious

Also, if R. Scott Clark would read my book he would see that I provide an answer for him again in that book in the chapter titled, “Transformation of Culture.” So, either R. Scott Clark is lying when he says he has seen no coherent response to his queries about how math, softball, or nations can be Christian or else his worldview won’t allow him to see an answer that everyone else can easily see.

Clark then insists that he is not a defeatist. All I can do is offer that such a statement is a real knee-slapper. Everything that Clark contends for in terms of his R2K social order project guarantees that Christianity will return to the catacombs. As I argue in my book in the chapter “Militant Amillennialism” R2K’s eschatology requires defeat. Quoting from my book, I note,

“The R2K eschatology is what I call a militant amillennialism. The Amillennial eschatology does not allow for the victory of the Gospel and Biblical Christianity in space and time. In Amillennial eschatology the return of Christ is a return characterized by a church that is under assault and is greatly diminished in the world. Christ returns to rescue the Church much like the US Cavalry rides in to save an almost depleted Fort Custer as surrounded by the Indians ready to make their final push to take the Fort. The R2K Amillennialists really believe this and so it is baked into their eschatology. Because they do not believe that victory is possible they have developed a theology under the tutelage of men like David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, Mike Horton, D. G. Hart, and others that by definition does not allow for victory. By creating a common square that, by definition, can not ever be anything but common the R2K Amillennialist has created a self-fulfilled eschatology. Since by definition the public square cannot be anything but common the public square cannot see the triumph of Christ in space and time in the public square. The is militant Amillennialism.”

Clark next insists that all he is arguing for is a return to the American project which means the restoration of secular government while pursuing a desire to re-frame the classical Reformed distinction between nature and grace.

We would note here that when Clark tells us that he desires to return to the American project what he is telling us is that he desire to return to the vision of the Enlightenment crowd numbered among the founding fathers. This is a vision that affirms neutrality as seen in the insistence that the State (as well as the national institutions) remains neutral when it comes to the issue of religion. Clark continues to not understand, and no power short of conversion can make him understand, that neutrality is a myth. Jesus Himself said that “he does not gather with me scatters.” Jesus Himself said that, “he who is not with me is against me.” Jesus Himself said, “You cannot serve two Masters.” Clark desires to serve Jesus as Master while having a neutral state that does not serve Jesus as Master. This is not only not Christianity that Clark is pushing this is anti-Christianity. Let it be said clearly that there is no such thing as a secular State/Government if by secular you mean a State/Government that is ruling apart from a standpoint of religion and ruling apart from some god or god concept. Clark’s idea of secular is the idea that Roger Williams (He of Anabaptist fame) instantiated in Rhode Island. R. Scott Clark as more in common with Roger Williams than he does John Calvin.

Clark next invokes the sainted Abraham Kuyper. Clark would be better served reading Philippus Jacobus Hoedemaker’s critiques of Kuyper on this score. After Clark is finished reading Hoedemaker he can then buy a copy of Wm. T. Cavanaugh’s, “The Myth of Religious Violence.” From that work he can learn that all his chicken little screaming about violence from Christian magistrates is just so much hooey.

Clark then offers a real eye-popper when he writes;

“As a historian, I am endlessly puzzled by the desire, expressed by Wolfe and others, for a return to a state-church. What do they imagine the outcome will be? They claim that they will get it right this time, though virtually all other attempts before them have failed. This reminds me very much of the Marxist claim that we should give that another run because the right people have not tried it yet.”

I too am a historian, though I never earned a terminal degree in the field. (If Clark is an example of a Historian with a terminal degree I thank God I never went on to get the terminal degree.) History was one of my under-grad degrees. I took all the historiography courses. I examined the different schools of history. I read the heavy hitters. So, as a historian I am endlessly puzzled by Clark’s inability to see that a state-church is an inescapable category. Our nation is covered with state-churches, supported with state-funds, manned by state-educated state-Priests. Somewhere in the vicinity of 90% of American children (ages K-12) attend these state-churches being indoctrinated thoroughly with the state religion. Yet, Clark is so jejune that he can suggest that we, in America, do not have a state-Church. It is amazing. Clark complains that too many people are like Marxists and yet the man can’t see that our state-Church pushes some one form or another of Marxism.

R. Scott Clark’s Christianity is completely novel. No Reformed person before Meredith Kline thought anything like this. As Dr. Stephen Wolfe has written regarding R2K;

“Van Drunen (Clark belongs to this school of thought), for example, resolves the ‘contradictions’ of traditional two kingdoms theology with a theological system that affirms post WW II norms of secularism, multiculturalism, and anti-nationalism. His political theology might rightly be called ‘post WW II consensus theology,’ and I suspect that historians, looking back at it, will conclude that his theology is highly historically conditioned.”

Van Drunen, D. G. Hart, R. Scott Clark, Mike Horton, Sean Michael Lucas, Matthew Tuininga, David T. Gordon, and countless others are spewing a “theology” that is perhaps 80 years old at best. It is completely novel and it is a theology that none of the Reformers or their descendants would recognize as Reformed. Yet, despite the truth of that these posers are all over the place screaming that they alone are orthodox. Jesus refused to turn stone into bread but these highly educated dunces have gladly complied.

Westminster Larger Catechism & R2K’s Hatred of Theocracy

Many R2K fanboy “theologians” are Presbyterians. These fanboy theologians insist that God hates theocracy. They insist with their doctrine of “intrusion ethic” that God’s law does not apply to the common realm. Do these fanboy “theologians” realize that they are in contradiction to their own confession? Have they taken an exception?

LC#191 Q- What do we pray for in the “second petition” of the Lord’s prayer which is Thy Kingdom Come?

A – the Kingdom of God is to “be countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate.”

Or Q-108 which asks what are the duties required in the second commandment.

A – “the disapproving , detesting, opposing all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry.”

Or Q-118 “What is the charge of keeping the sabbath more specially directed to governors of families, and other superiors?”

The answer says that it is directed to other superiors, because “they are bound not only to keep it themselves, but to see that it be observed by all those that are under their charge.”

Other superiors include the civil magistrate.

McAtee Would Like A Word With Americans Hankering For “Pluralism” XI

“The American Revolutionaries revolted against the British crown because they rejected the legitimacy of the monarchy, even an ostensibly Christian, theocratic monarchy. That some Americans today are even considering going back to that mess of pottage is astounding. It suggests that they have not digested 1 Samuel 8 and that, like the Marxists, they imagine theocracy has not worked because the right people have not tried it.”

Dr. R. Scott Idiot

R2K Cheerleader

IQ of a Potato

Bret responds,

1.) The Colonial Americans did not revolt because they rejected the legitimacy of a Monarch. The Colonial Americans revolted because they The American Revolutionaries revolted against the British crown because they rejected the illegitimate rule of a legitimate monarch. King George III had violated the political charters and covenants of the colonies and having violated those political charters and covenants the Colonialists understood they had to obligation to obey a otherwise legitimate Monarchy who had declared his illegitimacy by his actions in violating the political covenants that had been entered into by King and people.

2.) Now Christian pro establishment of religion people are “like the Marxists?” What a nekulturny Clark shows himself to be. Personally, I don’t want to go back to a Christian strongman Prince such as Stephen Wolfe advocates. I would prefer a return to muscular Christian Constitutional Republicanism. However, having said that and understanding that Enlightenment political theory is decidedly NOT Christian I can understand people thinking that a Christian strongman Prince man might be the way to go.

In closing let’s note something Cornelius Van Til (CVT) said. CVT wrote that people could be incredibly bright but still incredibly wrong. The analogy that CVT used is that of a miter saw. People’s minds are like miter saws that can be incredibly sharp but suffer from cutting at the wrong angle every time. I suppose it is possible that Clark is not an Idiot. I suppose he is just a CVT miter saw that cuts at the wrong angle every time. Either way… Idiot of miter saw don’t send your sons to be taught by R. Scott Clark.

McAtee Would Like A Word With Americans Hankering For “Pluralism” X

“American religious pluralism works. There are indeed those on the radical cultural left who are seeking to impose a kind of new national religion. The answer, however, is not to react by seeking to overthrow the American experiment in favor of theocracy, but rather to reargue and reassert the American principle of religious pluralism. We should resist the theocrats of the left and the right.”

Dr. R. Scott Idiot

R2K Dissembler

Bret responds,

1.) Pluralism is a myth since pluralism does not allow for a Christian religion that resolves that there should be no other God’s before the God of the Bible in the public square. So, we do not live under pluralism. We live under a religious establishment that makes the State is God since it is the State which is the supreme entity that determines how far any God can walk in the public square. The State is, because of Scott’s putative religious pluralism, the God who is God over all the Gods. THAT is NOT pluralism. That is a system where there is one God (the FEDS) and all other gods must genuflect before that God. What we have is the old pluralistic Roman system that allowed for all the gods to be present in the public square as long as each of them pinched incense to Caesar. That R2K and Scott can’t see this and insists quite to the contrary that we live in pluralism just screams that this man should not be allowed within 10 miles of a pulpit or lectern.

2.) American religious pluralism works? Scott keeps using that word “work.” I do not think it means what he thinks it means. Well, I suppose if you believe that 50 million dead babies means “working” I guess it does. I suppose if you believe Drag Queen Story Hour, gender surgery for children, and sodomites marry uranians means “working” than I guess it works.

Do you see what I mean by repeatedly saying the man is an “idiot?” Only an idiot would say “American religious pluralism works.”

3.) Theocracy is an inescapable category. See earlier entry on this point. No government is arranged so as to avoid theocracy. Clark is an idiot.

4.) Of course everyone argues for theocracy since it is never an argument of if but only of which. Scott himself is arguing for a theocratic arrangement as embraced by Hume, Rousseau, and Voltaire. He probably doesn’t even know that since he is blind to his own worldview.

5.) Religious pluralism (so called) has got us where we are at and R. Scott Idiot suggests the remedy for where we are at is more religious pluralism (so called)? The man is a towering Idiot.

McAtee Would Like A Word With Americans Hankering For “Pluralism” IX

“We Americans have not, since the Revolution, suffered the endless European wars of religion in large measure because we have agreed that we will not seek to use the lever of state power to force others to support or adhere to our religion.”

R. Scott Idiot

R2K Novice Historian

Bret Responds,

I won’t take the time to unravel this but if the reader will reference the book by William T. Cavanaugh titled “The Myth of Religious Violence,” one will learn from Cavanaugh that the claim that “religion is … essentially prone to violence is one of the foundational legitimating myths of the liberal nation-state (p. 4).” In other words, of course R. Scott Idiot would seek to perpetuate this myth since their myth perpetuates his religious advocacy for the religion that outlaws the supremacy of Jesus Christ as King of Kings. Cavanaugh goes on to say that “It is this claim (the presence of wars of religion) that I find both unsustainable and dangerous (p. 6).”

Cavanaugh shreds our beloved Dr. R. Scott Idiot by writing of different variants of this view that “They all suffer from the same defect: the inability to find a convincing way to separate religious violence from secular violence (p. 8.)” Such arguments in fact “immunize themselves from empirical evidence (p. 8.)” Cavanaugh argues on the contrary that “so-called secular ideologies and institutions like nationalism and liberalism can be just as absolutist, divisive, and irrational as those called religious (p. 8.)”

Cavanaugh in fact organizes the different variants of Clark’s claim in Chapter 1 under the three categories of claims that “religion” is 1) absolutist, 2) divisive and 3) irrational. Cavanaugh concludes the chapter, indicating “The point is that the distinction between secular and religious violence is unhelpful, misleading, and mystifying, and it should be avoided altogether (p. 56).”

Now either Dr. R. Scott Idiot doesn’t know this and so is stupid or else he does know it and is seeking to deceive people into his position. So, either he is an idiot or he is a deceiver. You decide which is worst.