Category: Culture

What accounts for cultural commonality between pagans and Christians in a given culture existing alongside the fundamental antithesis that the Bible teaches is between Christians and pagans?

Some posit the answer of Natural law. Natural law, so it is claimed, can be accessed by pagans and so allows pagans to operate with a proper sense of ought-ness to civil realm realities. However, such an answer misses the reality that Natural law, while being something that genuinely exists, can not be read aright except that Special revelation be, at some level, assumed. The pagan may get some things right and some might even credit that getting of some things right to Natural law, but the thing to remember is that those who want to credit that the pagan gets civil things right can’t account for how it is that a pagan who is beginning with autonomous self as their ultimate beginning point can get things right via Natural law.

The answer for the issue of commonality existing alongside the idea of the biblical antithesis is that both that the pagans have not yet worked out the implications of their Christ hating worldview — retaining yet stolen capital from the Christians worldview in their worldview — AND the Christian likewise has not yet worked out the implications of their Christ honoring worldview, retaining yet impurity in their thinking that allows accommodation and commonality with their pagan neighbor on matters that they ought not to be accommodating upon and where no commonality should exist. As time goes by and as people (Christians and pagans alike) work out the implications of their respective worldviews the result will be that the commonality decreases as the antithesis increases.

The fact that commonality exists is accounted for, not by Natural law, but rather by both Christians and pagans living together in the twilight of their inconsistencies.

“…[W]hen the mother shall have found another sphere than her home for her energies; when she shall have exchanged the sweet charities of domestic love and sympathy for the fierce passions of the hustings [politics]; when families shall be disrupted at the caprice of either party, and the children scattered as foundlings from their hearthstone, it requires no wisdom to see that a race of sons will be reared nearer akin to devils than to men. In the hands of such a bastard progeny, without discipline, without homes, without a God, the last remains of social order will speedily perish, and society will be overwhelmed in savage anarchy.…[T]he very traits which fit her to be the angel of a virtuous home unfit her to meet the agitations of political life, even as safely as does the more rugged man. The hot glare of publicity and passion will speedily deflower her delicacy and sweetness. Those temptations, which her Maker did not form her to bear, will debauch her heart, developing a character as much more repulsive than that of the debauched man as the fall has been greater. The politicating woman, unsexed and denaturalized, shorn of the true glory of her femininity, will appear to men as a feeble hybrid manikin dwarf, with all the defects and none of the strength of the male. Instead of being the dear object of his chivalrous affection, she becomes his importunate rival, despised without being feared!”

R. L. Dabney — 19th Century Reformed Theologian
Women’s Rights

From Dabney’s words we see that the Feminist movement, that has so sold itself as the champion of Women and the protector and keeper of all things female, is, in point of fact, a movement that is concerned with destroying women and with putting them in bondage.

There is a great deal that is done today in the name of “respecting women” which is merely a cover for degrading women. Giving just one example women are not esteemed and are only brought low when they people insist that they are equal to men in the sense of being the same as men. Women are not the same as men and any argument that argues of the equality of women that is really arguing for the sameness of women is an argument that degrades women.

Note also the point of the Dabney quote where he suggests that the degradation of women leads inevitably to the degradation of men. Women who are taught that they are the same as men yield men who believe that they are no different from women. At this point sexual identity is completely comprised and the social order perishes.

“Even though Kuyper and Schilder begin w/ Jesus Christ when they speak of culture, they have different views of his significance for culture. Kuyper sees Jesus Christ as savior who pours out his special grace into Greek-Roman culture, that is to say, Jesus Christ is the savior of culture. But Schilder sees Jesus Christ as the Savior of man. He works salvation in many. This work includes making disobedient people into people who serve God again in their cultural work.”

~ N. H. Gootjes
Always Obedient; Essays on the teaching of Dr. Klass Schilder — pg. 39, 40, 41

It is interesting that despite all the Kuyper did for worldview thinking he did not believe that such a thing as Christian culture existed. Kuyper saw the whole idea of culture as anthropocentric and he wanted to think theocentric so he preferred to use the term “common grace” in reference to civilizational development. So, Kuyper refused the concept of Christian culture preferring instead to speak instead of Western culture influenced by Christianity. So it appears that for Kuyper differing cultures are static realities that can be developed by more or less common grace.

Schilder, on the other hand takes a more bottom up approach. Cultures are not entirely static realities that can be influenced by larger or smaller measures of common grace but rather they can be Christian as a tipping point is reached in a given culture by the work of special grace visiting increasing number of individuals. For Schilder Christians can be Christian and when they are not Christian it is the consequence of the work of redemption being left undone among people groups.

In summary, Kuyper sees the Kingship of Christ influencing cultures through common grace as Christianity visits and influences various already developed cultural instantiations. Schilder sees culture as the outgrowth of people who are either Redeemed or un-Redeemed. If Redemption visits individuals in large enough measures then whole cultures are not merely influenced by Christianity but can be legitimately referred to as “Christian culture.”

I have mentioned several times on this blog the crisis of Europe in regard to its Muslim immigration problem. One book I highly recommend on this subject is Christopher Caldwell’s, “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe.” Also, if one desires to think through this subject one should be familiar with Serge Trifkovic as well as Robert Spencer. Finally, it doesn’t take that much effort to read or listen to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood speech from 1968. This speech was both prophetic and the end of Powell’s hope to be Prime Minister of Britain. Powell’s speech is a great example of someone being ostracized and destroyed for being right.

Anyway, I am a firm believer that unless Europe takes some actions to both stem the tide of its Islamic immigration and reverse the Islamic demographics Europe will become Eurabia (Islamistan) by the end of this century (Maybe sooner).

In the link below the author gives a brief account of how things could be turned around. I don’t know if the political will exists to do some of these things but it at least is a thought experiment on how the Islamification of Europe is not yet inevitable.

If found it to be a short and interesting read on how the West might still be preserved. It is not the whole answer. The whole answer is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But it at least posits some ways that the Muslim aspect of Europe’s paganization might be arrested.

http://tsarlazar.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/rejecting-the-eurabia-thesis/

“After being criticized over illegal immigrants getting health care, the president said, “It is very important that we have compassion as part of our national character.”

Wall Street Journal Article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704116004575521901674416306.html

1.) Compassion, in the way that it is being used here, is not infinite. The compassion that B. Hussein Obama wants to give to illegal immigrants in the way of “free” health care will be, to those who are being taxed to fund this compassion, a certain meanness, coldness and hardness. Compassion given to illegal immigrants in the way of “free” health care means a lack of compassion to American citizens in the way of lost employment opportunities, lost wages, and lost quality health care. Compassion given to illegal immigrants in the way of creating a government large enough to administer “free” health care means a concerted meanness, coldness, and hardness towards the private sector as it is constricted in order that the public sector (i.e. — Government) may expand. Compassion given to illegal immigrants in the way of “free” health care means a lack of compassion to American citizens in the way of death panels and restricted access to quality health care.

There is a great deal of talk about compassion on this subject. The theme of compassion was all the rage at the CRC synod I attended but it is the compassion of the muddleheaded who refuse to think through the coldness, hardness, and meanness that eventuates with the embrace of their addlepated compassion.

2.) Compassionate national character is expressed by citizens voluntarily giving their monies to help those who can not help themselves. Compassionate national character is not expressed by the Nation State’s centralized government being compassionate with money that must be stolen through confiscatory taxation in order for it to be compassionate.

3.) There is nothing compassionate in our character when our Government sets up death panels for our seniors and for the infirm in order that illegal immigrants might receive “free” health care. There is nothing compassionate in our character when we allow the Federal Government to create within the citizenry a dependence disposition where they learn to look to the Centralized state to meet all their needs. There is nothing compassionate in our national character when we provide for the alien and stranger while impoverishing our own citizenry.

If we pursue the compassionate national character that B. Hussein Obama desires we will become a people who are cold, hard and thoroughly mean.