Category: Culture

“The liberal thinkers and statesmen who were the makers of the nineteenth century civilization regarded religion and culture as entirely independent phenomena. Religion was entirely a matter for the individual conscience and it had nothing to do with social and economic life. But the resultant secularization of culture which took place throughout Western Europe in the nineteenth century brought its own nemesis. It led to the discredit of a religion that had no power over social life and of a culture that had no spiritual sanctions. It found at once its logical conclusion and its refutation in the yet more radical secularization of life characterized by the Marxian philosophy. While Liberalism had pushed religion on one side, Communism eliminated it altogether and thus prepared the way for the complete re-absorption of the individual in the social organism, while at the same time it transformed the social organism into an economic mechanism.

Christopher Dawson
Enquiries Into Religion & Culture — pg. xviii

1.) It is a myth to think that one can separate religion and culture. However, what the nineteenth century did was to insist that Christianity (this is the religion that Dawson is referring to) could be confined to the individual while culture could get along quite well uninformed by the Christian faith. What actually was happening, was not the secularization of culture, but rather what was happening was the incremental and subtle moving of culture to a different religious foundation besides Christianity. The liberal statesmen and thinkers of whom Dawson mentions — most of whom doubtless were not epistemologically self-conscious about what they were doing — could not have succeeded with their task of positing Western culture on a different faith/religious foundation if they had been explicit about their intentions. Consequently, the justification for the cordoning of Christianity off to a private individual realm that was compartmentalized from culture was advanced in the name of constructing a more equitable public square through the pursuit of secularizing it (i.e. — moving it off its Christian foundation) so that conflicts of faith would be kept out of the public square.

2.) Such an endeavor is ultimately futile. Just as Christian ethics can not be retained over the long haul when the attempt is made to peel those ethics away from the Christian Theology that supports and informs those ethics, so a Christian culture can not be retained over the long haul when the attempt is made to peel a culture away from the religion/theology that informs it. The attempt to both move culture off of its Christian base in the pursuit of “secularization” and to expect the retention of the stability that was characteristic of that culture when it was firmly pinioned on the Christian religion is akin to the attempt to move a water fountain off of a well that gives potable water in the pursuit of a alien polluted well while retaining the expectation that the polluted well will be fine since the water fountain has always previously issued potable water.

3.) When Dawson mentions a degraded culture that has “no spiritual sanctions” it reminds me that cultures are always covenantal. One of the characteristics of covenant is that there are always sanctions for violating the covenant. The culture that resulted from the shift to “secularization” is a culture where the spiritual sanctions have not so much that the spiritual sanctions no longer exist but rather the spiritual sanctions have changed so that the new covenant resulting from the putative secularization are sanctions that just the opposite of what they had previously been. Now, since the sanctions have drastically changed it may look like that the culture no longer has “spiritual sanctions” when looked at with the expectation of the sanctions of the previous culture but one can be sure that some sanctions still exist. As one obvious example of what I am getting at, two generations ago homosexuality in the culture of the West received the spiritual sanction of being ostracized. Two generations later if one expects those same spiritual covenantal sanctions to exist one might say that the culture no longer has spiritual sanctions. However, as I said, the spiritual sanctions haven’t gone away but rather now the spiritual sanctions fall on those who expect spiritual sanctions to fall on homosexuality. Culture is inevitably covenantal. It has spiritual sanctions. When you move the culture from one religion to another religion the covenant changes with that movement and the spiritual sanctions do likewise.

3.) Note that the point that Dawson is making is that nineteenth century liberal thinkers and statesmen were embraced a dualism that divorced religion from culture. It is interesting that the R2Kt proponents w/ their Escondido Hermeneutic contend for the very same dualism as the nineteenth century liberal thinkers and statesmen that Dawson refers to. Likewise both the Escondido Hermeneutic and the doctrine of the nineteenth century liberal thinkers and statesmen insist and insisted on a religion that is and was restricted to the individual conscience that has nothing to do with social and economic life.

4.) Don’t miss the powerful point that Dawson makes when he tells us that the result of creating a dualistic culture where Christianity is grossly privatized what arises is a new theology (Marxism) that will overcome the previous dualism in favor of a religion (some variant of socialism) that will provide a unify integration point that will provide cohesion for all of society and its culture. The danger here of course is that Marxism is a corporate humanism that provides not a unifying but rather a Humanistic Unitarian integration point that allows for no diversity as the Christian faith does. What this means is a savage Borg-like ugly sameness that is impressed upon all individuals in the societal hive. This is the guaranteed eventual result of the dualism that is offered by the Escondido Hermeneutic. If Christianity will not inform all of life then some other pagan belief system will provide the integration point that will inform the totality of a society and culture.

1.) Co-opt the Christian church and faith so that it teaches a faith system that is still called Christianity that is inimical to a freedom loving people maintaining the desire to remain free.

2.) View the Constitution as a living document and in doing so completely eviscerate the 9th and 10th amendments as well as the whole notion of separation of powers. This is achieved via Judicial and Bureaucratic fiat.

3.)Eliminate all competing zones of societal sovereignty. Rid family, church, academia, and other parallel institutions of their ability to legislate their respective realms independent of the State.

4.) Criminalize the individual who has been taught critical thinking skills. Attack this individual and his inalienable rights through fiat laws (see #2) that lead to perpetual harassment.

5.) Attack and eliminate the whole notion of private property through confiscatory taxation, inflation of the money supply, and excessive regulation. Consistent w/ this wage unremitting war against small businesses and grassroots entrepreneurs.

6.) Seize complete control of the education apparatus of society and turn them into temples that indoctrinate the state religion in the pupils.

7.) Elect a new citizenry by encouraging illegal immigration and by so reducing the bar for qualifying for Citizenship that the nation is populated by easily controlled illiterate and the uneducated aliens. This also has the salutary effect of diluting the influence of the native born educated Americans and aids w/ achieving #1.

8.) Destroy, by the devaluing of the currency the private financial institutions that have funded the greatest production and accumulation of prosperity the world has ever known. Destruction of the financial institutions can also come be direct seizure or by forcing upon them money policies at which they would have naturally recoiled.

9.) Embrace some form of socialism by putting in place command and control economic policies which yield redistribution (and so destruction) of wealth. This is achieved by destroying the currency and replacing it w/ a new currency or by revaluing the existing currency.

10.) By way of embracing international law, international treaty and executive fiat destroy national sovereignty.

11.) Steer foreign policy and military might away from National interest, putting them at the service of international interests and globalism instead.

12.) Seize ownership of weaponry from the citizen, or make their ownership of weaponry a non-factor, or so dispirit the citizenry that they are not willing to use their weaponry to resist tyranny.

13.) Place people in bondage to their hedonistic lifestyle so that in order to maintain their hedonistic lifestyle they will acquiesce to the promise of the State that it will augment their hedonistic lifestyles through governmental fiat. If successful people will then call their government augmented hedonistic lifestyle “freedom.”

14.) Keep the citizenry in debt. A people in debt will not resist a government that gives false promises to relieve debt.

“Abortion Supporter

The essence of Utilitarianism was the celebrated remark of Bentham that poetry, push-pen, the same thing–what Bentham described as the “moral calculus” was that the greatest good of the greatest number should be the ultimate measure of the morality of alternative public policy choices.

This is the anti-thesis of the basic principles of contemporary mainline Protestantism–not just in the Presbyterians & other Calvinist denominations but among Lutherans, Methodists, and the National Council of Churches, the governing body of the mainstream Protestant churches.”

First, let us understand that mainline Protestants are Protestant the way that Metrosexual Males are Male. To speak of mainline Protestants as being uniquely Protestant is bunkum. Further to speak of any mainline Protestants as having any theological flavor to them (e.g– Presbyterian & other Calvinist denominations,Lutheran, and Methodist)is completely fatuous. A mainline Protestant Presbyterian is ideologically, theologically, philosophically and culturally the same as a mainline Methodist. They are all children born of the same Mother.

AS

“The very core, most necessary belief underlying Protestantism is the basic claim of Luther in beginning the Protestant Reformation–“every man (woman) is his (her) own priest: our relationship to God is direct, it does not detour through the intercession of clergy or saints or any other third parties. We answer directly to God for our choices: this is both the freedom God has given to us, and it is an “awful” responsibility, one that we can undertake only, in Kierkegaard’s words, with “fear and trembling”. God has given us reason and conscience, AND both the freedom AND responsibility (opposite sides of the same coin) to make the right, moral choices. The Bible provides us with a powerful guide. But in the end, we–men, women alike–have the great, awesome reponsibility to use our freedom of choice consistent with the teachings of the Nazarene.”

First, this statement is just factually wrong. The Reformation doctrine was not the priest of each believer but rather the priesthood of all believers. The doctrine has about it a certain covenantal and corporate ring. God’s people together are a Kingdom of Priests. The doctrine was never intended to nourish and foster some kind of anarchistic libertarianism, but rather was advanced to disassemble the mediatorial work of Christ from being exactly identified with the Church. It is a long long distance between giving people assurance that Christ’s mediatorial work is uniquely his and his alone for them and suggesting that the doctrine also include that they are now autonomous agents that are not answerable to any governing authority.

Second, while it may be true that have a great and awesome responsibility to use our freedom of choice consistent with the teachings of the Nazarene, it is also true that God has put governing structures in place that result in punishment if those choices run contrary to inscribed laws.

AS

“A woman confronting an awkward, dangerous, destructive pregnancy CANNOT avoid her direct responsibility by consulting the clergy or other human advocates of one morality or another. She cannot rationalize a choice based on pragmatic, practical reasons. She has an absolute moral obligation to listen to her own heart, weigh the alternative consequences, make her choice with full awareness of how her decision can/will affect her children, her family, her health, her future well being, the potential child.”

The above blockquote is a “Captain Obvious” statement. It is true that a woman in the situation described above has to make a choice but we should be clear here that the choice she has to make is only a choice between disobedience and obedience. It is the same choice that every person makes every day on whether or not they are going to go to the nearest government school and go on a mad frenzy shooting up every living being they can find at that school. Now, people may be counseled by Clergy not to do that but they CANNOT avoid her direct responsibility by consulting the clergy or other human advocates of one morality or another. They cannot rationalize a choice based on pragmatic, practical reasons. They have an absolute moral obligation to listen to their own heart, weigh the alternative consequences, make their choice with full awareness of of all the attendant consequences. In short, like the hypothetical woman in the blockquote above, people can decide to be murderers or they can decide not to be but the decision is theirs.

AS

“The basic doctrine of the churches in the mainstream Protestant National & World Councils of Churches is that it it the duty and obligation of fellow, Christians to support her in the choice she determines is the moral course of action for her, and to respect that she is following her faith and her conscience in meeting the responsibility that God has placed on HER ALONE to use the freedom God has given her to make the choice that is right for her.”

And this is one reason why we refer to mainstream Protestant National & World Councils of Churches as Apostate, Sons of Belial, Heretics, and all round bad guys, for in this counsel they urge upon their people to become supporters of torture, murder, and violence against the weakest among us and the judicially innocent.

AS

“Mainstream Protestantism understands that the question of when life begins is a matter of legal definition determined by the courts and political processes. There is NO scientific or medical answer to the question: medical authorities and scientists can determine the presence of absence of attributes that we associate with “life”–brain activity, etc etc, but their expertise is not and ought not to be construed as providing the moral proficiency to decide arbitrarily when enough of the those attributes are present or are not.”

This is all smoke, blown in order to aid and assist in the work of people who sear their conscience. This is all smoke, blown in order to hide the work that is being done by the guilty in the suppressing of the truth in unrighteousness. Scripture clearly tells us when life begins.

13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.

Note in vs. 13 the inspired Psalmist is acknowledging that before he was, by our standards, viable, God was forming a life that had begun. Note in vs. 16 the Psalmist refers to himself as being a self conscious being whom God saw while yet unformed.

All of this is indicative that life begins at conception. At the very least it is all indicative that since man does not know when exactly life begins caution should be on the side of the baby in the womb and laws against murder should be applied to life in the womb should apply both to Women as accomplices to murder and to Doctors who are murders.

AS

What the “law” should dictate in arbitrarily deciding that life begins at some point between ovulation and delivery of a live fetus is an extremely delicate matter for a religiously pluralistic nation like the United State, with some major faiths on each side of the political debate”.

This statement is itself arbitrary. The “law” everyday decides upon matters that are extremely delicate for a religiously pluralistic people. Our “law” decides that Hindu widows in America are not to be burnt on the funeral pyre with their dead husbands. Our “law” decides that, quite contrary to Islamic law, that people don’t lose hands for theft. Our “law” decided that Mormons couldn’t have more then one wife. The fact that major faiths are on each side of a political debate is clearly irrelevant. What is relevant is that the decision to allow abortion is the result of the pursuit of a religious elite to foist upon the nation as a whole the convictions of their religion. One of the conviction of “religious secularism” is that abortion shall be encouraged and allowed.

“AS

“Our secular Supreme Court tip-toed its way to middle ground using the concept of “viability”: constitutional guarantees of personal liberties cannot be twisted to impose upon a woman a ban on terminating the fetus on the basis of religious beliefs she does not share and may in fact vigorously oppose–but once the fetus has reached “viability” (the capacity to survive on its own outside the womb then another “person” has come into existence, and the courts and the political process may make judgments, enact legislation and enforce it in judicious balancing of the competing rights of the woman and the new person to whom she has given birth.”

This is more smoke.

Viability is a completely arbitrary ‘middle ground,’ reached in keeping with the faith of SCOTUS called religious secularism. If constitutional guarantees of personal liberties can be “twisted” to impose upon people a ban on randomly murdering people on the basis of religious beliefs (after all, all beliefs are, by definition, religious) they do not share and may in fact vigorously oppose then constitutional guarantees of personal liberties likewise can be twisted to impose upon a woman a ban on terminating the fetus on the basis of religious beliefs she does not share and may in fact vigorously oppose. AS, you are being irrational.

Constitutional personal liberties can not be twisted to become a license to sanction “each man doing what is right in their own eyes.” This whole notion of Constitutional personal liberties as it applies to abortion is just more smoke manufactured in order to hide murder.

AS

This is NOT a theocracy. This is NOT a nation that has ordained one religious viewpoint or church to oversee the religious beliefs and practices of those who do not belong to that church or share that viewpoint.This is NOT a nation whose constitution and democratic form of government allow adherents of one religious belief system to force their beliefs on the others to the extent of forcing a woman who does not believe having a child is the correct moral choice for her to make.”

I want to briefly make the case that every nation is a nation that belongs to some god and as such is organized as a theocracy. Nations are constructed culturally and as cultures are theologies incarnated it is inevitable that a nation will belong to the God behind the incarnated theology, even when the god of the culture isn’t explicitly named. Even in a so called “secular” nation, that disavows any god is operating on the basis that the god of the culture is the people autonomously considered. They disavow all gods as the god of their nation because they are the god of the nation.

America is a people of many gods and no gods. This is an admission that we are a people and a Nation who are polytheistic in our cultural orientation.

The problem with this is that no culture can cohesively function that is genuinely polytheistic. This is due to the fact that in a genuinely polytheistic culture there would be unremitting conflict since the various demands of the competing gods would forever put the followers of those gods at each others throats. In a truly polytheistic culture, there would be continuous culture wars.

As such wherever polytheistic cultures exist they can only function if there is some entity that is in charge of the competing gods setting limits as to how far the claims of the competing gods can be taken. For example, when the will of Allah teaches that women must cover themselves in public comes into conflict with the will of the feminist god who says that women can be topless in the public square some god has to step in to adjudicate the public square conflict between the gods.

This god of the gods in polytheistic cultures becomes the state. The state becomes the policeman of the gods. The state determines how far the gods can and can’t go in the public square. The state tells the adherents of the various gods how seriously they are allowed to take the commands and will of their respective gods.

The ironic consequence of this is that polytheism creates a monotheistic culture. Because polytheism has so many gods, some god must be badged to police the gods. The state then is the monotheistic entity that creates the common bonds that creates a common culture and all gods are welcome as long as all gods are willing to serve the god of the state.

AS

“The basic principles of American religious liberty dictate that people of different values and beliefs should be left to follow the dictates of their conscience AS THEY SHOULD. It is perfectly proper for Americans who find abortion ALWAYS WRONG to follow their belief in conducting their own lives–and there should be no interference with the exercise of basic American personal liberty.

It is ALSO perfectly proper for Americans to believe that a woman should make the decision herself and that she can make a correct moral choice to have an abortion, and those who do should follow their belief in conducting their lives as well–and they to should be able to use their basic American personal liberty according to the dictates of their conscience.”

The basic principles of American religious liberty dictate that people of different values and beliefs should be left to follow the dictates of their conscience AS THEY SHOULD. It is perfectly proper for Americans who find killing five year olds ALWAYS WRONG to follow their belief in conducting their own lives–and there should be no interference with the exercise of basic American personal liberty.

It is ALSO perfectly proper for Americans to believe that a woman should make the decision herself and that she can make a correct moral choice to kill a five year old, and those who do should follow their belief in conducting their lives as well–and they to should be able to use their basic American personal liberty according to the dictates of their conscience.

AS,

What causes the contentiousness is that we have political activists trying to force one code of behavior (with criminal sanctions against those who follow different dictates of conscience)–and in a religiously pluralistic nation of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, secularists, etc etc they know very well that there is no national consensus about the morality of abortion–but they also know very well how difficult it would be to try first to convince a consensus of Americans to oppose legal abortion to they are frantically trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.”

The crafting of law is always the imposing of some people’s beliefs on some who share those beliefs and upon others who don’t share those beliefs. Women have imposed upon them the belief of lawmakers that they will be potentially prosecuted and imprisoned for prostitution. They do not have a choice in selling their bodies w/o the potential of being criminally charged. (A bit ironic that society accepts the legislative belief imposition on a woman’s ability to choose to sell her body but society does not accept the legislative belief imposition on a woman’s ability to choose to torture and murder her unborn child.)

All the above blockquote proves is that whenever any people attempt to be religiously pluralistic the guaranteed result is a contentiousness that then eventually yields a monolithic religiously informed culture that works to sooth the previous contentiousness. It is literally not possible to build a cohesive culture consisting of peoples who take their gods seriously.

AS

“And don’t kid yourself for a moment. While I have absolute certainty in my own mind that sf’s comments were not meant to deny the validity of the Beliefs of American Christians who do NOT believe secular governmental power should be used to force a woman to either violate her own convictions or go to jail–the undeniable fact is that many of the American Catholic Bishops and many of the most prominent fundamentalist clergy are clearly aware that they are directing a political movement intended to do just that—and to do it in a direct assault upon our basic American creed of religious liberty for everyone, not just those of our denomination.”

AS, the problem here is that you are trying to cover murder under the notion of religious liberty for everyone. I hope w/ all my being that Bishops and clergy alike are directing a political movement to uphold the Constitutions enshrinement of the inalienable right to life.

What you need to realize is that you are part of a political movement intended to use religious governmental power to force a legislative climate where unborn babies can be tortured and murdered without consequence. You do this as a direct assault upon our basic American creed of physical liberty for the unborn. People who hold your positions are aiding and abetting mass murder on a monstrous scale unknown to civilized man.

AS

“It is a crucial necessity for them to pull off this monstrous hoax, that advocates of choice are only secular feminists & materialistic hedonists, and hoodwink the public into thinking that there are not serious religious people on both sides of the question.”

Oh, I quite agree that there are serious religious people on both sides of abortion. The serious religious people who support abortion are religiously pagan and are one with the worshipers of Molech in the Old Testament who offered up their children in the sacrificial fires.

“A child’s educational opportunity should be determined by her intellect and work ethic, not by her ZIP Code.”

Governor Bob McDonnell
Governor — Virginia

Now people are going to think I’m being picky here and hyper-critical but until the last 10 years or so anybody speaking or writing that above statement would have used the male pronoun “his” where the female pronoun “her” is used. Why the change? The answer is that we have bought into political correctness so that when we right papers or speak in public we think it necessary to occasionally sprinkle our speaking and writing with female pronouns where male pronouns had once been universally used. Up until we were crushed with PC everybody understood that the male generic pronoun was used to be inclusive of all mankind. However, some where along the way someone decided that the use of such pronouns was not sensitive to the female persuasion and as such, in an effort to show sensitivity to someones hyperactive feelings, our culture has gone to deleting the male pronouns in favor of the female pronouns. This happens everywhere from academic papers, to political speeches to bible translations. The habit is ubiquitous and what is a hoot is that the people who do it actually believe that they are revealing themselves to be a sensitive, kinder, more caring people.

Now, at the end of the day the pronoun itself is a very small thing. What is a very big thing though is all the feminism, multiculturalism, and political correctness that lays behind these small pronouns. What is a very big deal is the linguistic Marxism that tells us what speech we can use in order to be considered culturally attuned and what speech we can’t use lest we be considered social troglodytes. If the PC police can have their way with a culture on personal pronouns how much more will they have their way with culture on issues that are genuinely weighty?

Finally, all of this reveals to me again how compromised the Republican party is. If Gov. McDonnell spoke this way unconsciously then it shows he has unknowingly surrendered to some PC assumptions. If Gov. McDonnell spoke this way consciously then it shows he is willing to consciously compromise with the feminist, Marxist (but I repeat myself) zeitgeist.

Most people find it hard to believe how basic these seemingly small matters are to civilization, but it is my conviction that giving into this PC speak is indicative of a underlying bedrock Marxist layering that is operating as the intellectual background out of which a person communicates.

But then most people think I see far more then what is really present. You be the judge.

“Like the English Revolution in the seventeenth century, the Papal revolution pretended to be not a revolution but a restoration. Gregory VII, like Cromwell, claimed that he was not innovating, but restoring ancient freedoms that had been abrogated in the immediately preceding centuries. As the English Puritans and their successors found precedents in the common law of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, largely passing over the century or more of Tudor-Stuart absolutism, so the Gregorian reformers found precedents in the patristic writings of the early centuries of the church, largely passing over the Carolingian and post-Carolingian era in the West. The ideological emphasis was on tradition, but the tradition could only be established by suppressing the immediate past and returning to an earlier one. Writings of leading Frankish and German canonists and theologians of the ninth and tenth centuries were simply ignored. In addition, the patristic writings were interpreted to conform to the political program of the political program of the papal party, and when particular patristic texts stood in the way of that program they were rejected. Faced w/ an obnoxious custom, the Gregorian reformers would appeal over it to truth, quoting the aphorism of Tertullian and St. Cyprian, “Christ said ‘I am the truth,’ He did not say ‘I am the custom.'” Gregory VII quoted this against Emperor Henry IV, Beckett quoted it against King Henry II. It had special force at a time when almost all the prevailing law was customary law.

It is the hallmark of the great revolutions of Western history, starting with the Papal Revolution, that they clothe their vision of the radically new in the garments of a remote past, whether those of ancient legal authorities (as in the case of the Papal revolution), or of an ancient religious text, the Bible, (as in the case of the German Reformation), or of an ancient civilization, Classical Greece (as in the case of the French Revolution), or of a pre-historic classless society (as in the case of the Russian Revolution). In all of these great upheavals the idea of restoration — a return, and in that sense a revolution, to an earlier starting point — was connected w/ a dynamic concept of the future.

It is easy enough to criticize the historiography of the revolutions as politically biased and, indeed purely ideological…. What is significant is that at the most crucial turning points of Western history a projection into the distant past has been needed to match the projection into the distant future. Both the past and the future have been summoned, so to speak, to fight against the evils of the present.”

Harold Berman
Law & Revolution — The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition — pg. 112-113

Now for a couple varied applications,

1.) There is an attempted Revolution going on in the Reformed Church right now and it is being pursued by Westminster Seminary California. The way they are seeking to frame the debate is in keeping with the observations that Berman makes here about all revolutions. Like all Revolutions, WSCal is clothing their vision of the radically new in the garments of a remote past. They are taking an ancient religious authority, the Reformed Confessions and they are interpreting them to conform to the political program of the Escondido / R2K political program of the WSCal party. Like all Revolutions, they are selling this great upheaval as a return to a pristine time and are connecting it to their “dynamic” concept of a yet to be realized future.

The fact that they are interpreting the Confessions to conform to their political program can be seen in the Kerux article observation that while those advocating the Escondido Hermeneutic mouth the words of the confessions, they at the same time are speaking a different language. Kerux states on pg. 70-71,

“Though much of this language (the language of the Escondido Hermeneutic adherents — BLM) is clearly in line with the confessional formulations, it is not entirely clear to us that it accurately reflects its traditional and accepted meaning. There is a marked ambiguity that runs throughout all of these formulations—it is not always entirely clear in what precise sense the Mosaic covenant is to be considered a covenant of grace, or at least ‘part of’ or ‘connected to’ the covenant of grace….

Likewise, although these authors attempt to utilize traditional, orthodox language regarding the Mosaic covenant (“administration of the covenant of grace”), it is not entirely clear the precise sense this language carries in their formulations. Again, there is marked ambiguity, tension, and even self-contradiction in some of their formulations.

When this is combined with Kerux’s earlier observation that their is a desire on the part of some of those in the “Escondido Party” to change the language of the Confessions it it clear what is going on here is a radical revolution of the type that Berman speaks. When the Escondido Hermeneutic speaks on the confessions on the issue of covenant or R2K it is like watching a old Japanese Godzilla movie where you hear people speaking English and yet you know that they are saying something funky by the way their lips don’t quite match their words.

If the boys from Escondido get their way and are able to impose the Escondido Hermeneutic on large portions of the Reformed Church it will be a revolution in the Confessional Reformed Churches in America, which pro-rated for its smaller size, will be every bit as seismic as the Revolutions that Berman cites above.

2.) At the same time there is an attempt in America at large to pull off social revolution in this culture by the elites in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Using Berman’s language we would say that that the Cultural Marxists, as led by B. Hussein Obama, are clothing their vision of the radically new in the garment of the remote past by appealing to the ideal pre-Christian multicultural egalitarian society.

We must keep in mind the words of Obama in his inauguration speech that communicated his intent at Revolution,

“But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

The Cultural Marxists that has been embraced by our elites are on a mission of revolution and they are casting that image in clothing of fairness, and social equity. Because this is true every appeal to the past, or to legal documents (i.e. — Constitution) must be heard through the grid of their attempt to bring cultural Marxist revolution to America. These people will be satisfied with nothing less then social revolution for the simple reason that they are social revolutionaries.

Berman’s quote, especially the emboldened part, is quite handy for the times in which we live for we are surrounded by people who desire to bring in their version of social Revolution.