Category: Culture

Over at Bayly Blog I accidentally put my foot in it — which of course is not an uncommon occurrence.

Someone took a swipe at Calvin’s treatment of Servetus and I stood up for Calvin by noting that if magistrates had stayed consistent by dealing with future Servetus’ in a similar manner we would not have arrived at the point where homosexuality is seen as normative, and we would not have arrived at the point where homosexuals are allowed to evangelize our children through the curriculum in the government schools and we would not be slaughtering 1.3 million babies every year.

Rev. Tim Bayly, for reasons known only to him, took strong exception to this comment and even after I cited the fact that all of Christian Europe was after Servetus and that the Westminster Confession article 23 requires this kind of action from the magistrate Rev. Bayly still didn’t want the discussion taking place at his blog. I suppose it is possible that Tim has some former homosexuals in his congregation and so he doesn’t want to upset them by what he views as a heavy handed approach. I guess I should say that new laws forbidding crimes wouldn’t be enforced ex post facto. Converted homosexuals are my brothers in Christ and no law passed after the fact would effect them.

Rev. Bayly seems to think my position is uncharitable and unloving. It is popular to think that way and so I don’t fault him. Rev. Bayly really needs to ask himself though if it was uncharitable and unloving of God to require capital punishment for public blasphemers in the Old Covenant and if it wasn’t then what has changed?

The reality, is that when Calvin supported the decision that the Geneva Magistrates made on Servetus it was the most loving thing he could have done. Would the Magistrates and Calvin had turned a blind eye to the teachings of Servetus it would have been like ignoring a Cancer festering in a healthy body. When Calvin supported the decisions of the Magistrates in Geneva against Servetus he at the same time supported the health of Families, Churches, and the Societal unity in Geneva. To have allowed Servetus to go unchecked would have been hatred against God and His glory and it would have been a violation of God’s law word regarding blasphemers.

We have seen where Servetus’ Unitarianism has led in our own country. What started with the theological blasphemies of Servetus, by way of a long and winding ideological path that has snaked further and further away from the old Christian paths, has led to the death of 1.3 million babies every year in this country. It has led to the feminization and homosexulization of our culture. A little leaven does indeed leaven the whole loaf.

Some will contend that it is hard hearted and mean spirited to suggest that the State should bear the sword against public Blasphemers. But let us consider again the flip side of this. If public Blasphemers and publicly expressed God haters are allowed to hold sway we must ask the question who will they exercise the use of the sword against? Our culture reveals that they will yield the sword against those that they consider involved in public blasphemy against their god or gods concept.

One of the gods of our age is the god of sex without fertility. Getting pregnant is a public blasphemy against that god. The penalty that the State makes provision for is death for the conceived child. So the sum of this is that Magistrates will always bring the sword against public blasphemy. The Geneva magistrates brought it against Servetus for publicly blaspheming God. Our current magistrates create an environment where the sword is brought against the unborn for publicly blaspheming our sex without fertility god.

It would seem to me that since the Magistrates always ends up bringing the sword against the blasphemers of some god that we should advocate for magistrates bringing the sword against those who blaspheme the God of the Bible, thus showing a tender-heartedness and love towards those who are being killed in the name of false religions and false gods.

Rev. Bayly commented that under my belief system only a handful of people would be left alive. The truth however though, is that under God’s system the land would flourish and the 1.3 million yearly aborted that Rev. Bayly cares about so deeply would be among a host of those left alive.

Well this morning, I came across the Inaugural worship service that was held in the Washington Cathedral on 21 January 2009.

A few observations,

1.) It was an 86 minute service. Inclusive of all the songs and liturgy the name of Jesus Christ was mentioned one time by Rev. Andy Stanley. I’d like to give Andy points but to be honest you don’t get any points for being part of a ecumenical service where the gods are implicitly being given equal time and equal credence.

2.)Historic Christian songs were used but none of those songs referred to Christ. In this multi-cultural age we are going to have to think long and hard about grand historic hymns that made fine singing in the context of Christendom but can be easily co-opted into being paeans of praise to a generic civil religion god and gods.

3.)The worship was led by Christian ministers, Christian Priests, Hindu leaders, Rabbis, and Muslim leaders. This was not a Christian service but a polytheistic service. All the gods are welcome as long as all the gods know their place. This underscores my constant contention that the God in our system is the State who serves as the God of the gods.

4.) The civil religion aspect of it was highlighted by patriotic songs and the constant invoking for the good of the State and its leaders. A Christian service by contrast would ask for the good of God and that the leaders might be blessed as they are faithful to God’s revealed Word.

5.) The hypocrisy was pretty thick at two points. First, when they read the Isaiah 58:6-12 passage which was used for the theme. Second, when they sang “He’s got the little bitty babies in His hands.” When you read that passage, and then combine it with the song and then when you think of the barbarity of abortion you wonder how anybody could keep a straight face.

6.) The female preacher managed to use the anti-Christ dating system of “BCE” in order to date the book of Isaiah. This is a significant attack against Christianity.

7.) The sermon done by the “lady” preacher was entirely horizontal, speaking solely about man’s duty to man. It also was laden with socialistic type themes. A great deal of blather about social justice and the brotherhood of all mankind. It was a least common denominator sermon done for a least common denominator god. It fit wonderfully into an age that is trying to build a New World Order.

Conclusions,

1.) Our official State religion is the same as Rome’s in the 1st century. We are held together by Caesar worship. We are polytheistic in the sense that the citizenry is allowed to serve any god it wants as long as its god doesn’t defy Caesar.

2.) There is little strength in the mega Churches. Rick Warren and Andy Stanley are classic examples. If they are willing to be representatives who add Jesus to the pantheon of the State gods then it is questionable where their real allegiance lie.

3.) As Christians and in Churches we need to keep praying for civil magistrates but the requests should take on a predominant theme of repentance for our “leaders.”

4.) We should understand that our leadership is God’s judgment against our sin against Him. The Church has played the harlot and so we have been given wicked men to rule over us both in our Churches and in those who fill the role of civil magistrates.

ABC Sunday News Show

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

Now how did we go from aiding children’s health to making sure people don’t have children in two sentences? How does making sure that people don’t have children at the same time contribute to children’s health?

Look, the State sees itself as the parent of the citizenry and as the Parent it must decide when and to when not have children, and if it decides to not have children in order to relieve the pressure on the Parent’s budget as the parent it is sovereign to make that decision.

What this boils down is that the entitlement culture cannot provide for all the illegitimate children that it creates and as such the State will take sovereign responsibility to make sure that people on the Government dole will encouraged (in due time required) to not have to many children.

Also keep in mind that it is likely that planned parenthood is going to be the beneficiary of all this family planning stimulus money.

Now, you better believe that if the birth of children is a concern to the Sovereign state because of their great cost that it won’t be long until the Sovereign state will be concerned about how much money is required in our season of dying. The generation who aborted their children for the sake of convenience are going to find itself aborted in old age for the sake of convenience. Payback is a b—-.

How many more of God’s prerogatives does the State have to try and take up before Christians begin to realize that it is idolatry not to try and check the State’s desire to be God?

These people, and the people who keep voting for them are sphincter release valves.

“Natural law theory in both forms (the realism of Natural law organicism and the nominalism of Natural law social contract — BLM) prevented the development of a uniquely biblical social theory. The doctrine of the biblical covenant was missing, since one or more of its five points were denied: (1)the absolute personal sovereignty of God over both nature and human history; (2)the hierarchical authority of all human institutions under God’s limited, delegated sovereignty; (3)Biblical law as authoritative in all civilizations; (4) God’s historical sanctions (blessing and cursing), imposed in terms of his Bible revealed law; and (5) the development of history in response to the imposition of God’s sanctions, though mitigated temporarily by His mercy. Point 1 is called Calvinism; Point two is called representative government; points 3 and 4 are called theonomy; and point 5 is called postmillennialism. They are a package deal. Without all five, it is impossible to construct an exclusively and covenantally faithful biblical social theory.”

Dr. Gary North
Millennialism And Social Theory — pg. 39

Social theory that strives to be Biblical has to be covenantally structured. A Biblical social theory looks to create a social bond among men not in some chain of being reasoning that connects all reality into an organic whole that can then be read by a Natural law mechanism that is reflection of the union of all reality, nor in a social contract theory where the nature of reality is very mechanistically laid out and where natural law becomes the mechanistic equivalent for social order that the other laws of nature are for the operation of the cosmos.

The organic view of Natural law seems to partake in the errors of pantheism where man and God are united by shared being with the result that man can know the mind of God apart from God if only there is some sort of organic union that exists between the two. The social contract view of Natural law seem to partake in the errors of deism where God and His creation are divorced with God leaving behind a Natural law mechanism that functions in much the same way that the independent laws of nature operate. Man does not need special revelation to read this Natural law aright, he merely needs the use of his own right reason.

Each of these view of Natural law theory then incarnate themselves into differing understandings of social theory. Natural law realism produces a social theory organicism that is characterized by chain of being thinking. The metaphor that is often used to describe such societies is that it is a living entity. In this kind of Natural law everything in a social order is living tissue that is inter-connected. Society is viewed as an organism, just as the Cosmos as a whole is.

Natural law nominalism on the other hand produces a social theory that is contractual and is characterized by some kind of pre-historic contract that the ancients entered into that is binding on successive generations because the contract is a reflection of the way things are. According to Gary North,

“In the social contract theory men in the distant past voluntarily transferred their individually held political sovereignty to the State, which now maintains social order. Each social institution is governed by the terms of an original contract, whether mythical or historical.”

Unlike organicism which teaches that there is a unity between the seen and a real unseen realm social contract social theory denies any transcendent metaphysical reality or social unity where the contract on earth is corresponding to a contract in the heavenlies apart from the will of mortals. (Hence the nominalism)

A Biblical social order theory eschews both of these alternatives and opts for a view of social order has one that is kept together by complex system of legal bonds with God as the ultimate enforcer of that complex system.

In this social order arrangement there are four primary covenants, personal, familial, ecclesiastical, and civil.

More anon,

Warren’s prayer was confusion on steroids. Take for example the reference to God as being “Compassionate and Merciful.” Now, certainly the God of the Bible is “Compassionate and Merciful,” but which God of which religion is typically addressed as “the Compassionate and Merciful one?”

You got it …

Allah.

Now combine that insight with the one I mentioned earlier where Warren opens the prayer dwelling on the Unity of God but conveniently stepping aside the issue of the Trinity — the name of God which all Christians are Baptized into — and it begins to look like Warren was fishing for least common denominator God.

Look, Rick Warren is not dumb. None of us are setting here thinking of angles that Rick Warren didn’t think of. There is a purposeful blending going on in this prayer. As I said earlier it is an an attempt to be Christian and pluralist at the same time.

Think of the prayer as a compromise document — the purpose of which is to satisfy everybody who hears it because they are going to interpret it through their grid. In my estimation this is what Warren was reaching for. Evangelicals could hear it through their grid and be satisfied. Pluralists could hear it through their grid and be satisfied.

Look, Rick’s problem, like the problem of legions of Evangelicals today is that he has, consciously or unconsciously come up with a twist on the first and greatest commandment.

‘Please men with every word and deed. Rather, please humanity.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like unto it: ‘To the fullest extent compatible with the first commandment, love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind.’ All the principles of popularity, comfort and satisfaction hang on these two commandments. (Hat Tip — Keith LaMothe)

When you think about it, there really is a kind of twisted brilliance to it all.

One more thing on this score before I close. Recently, I got in on the tail end of a conversation with Dr. John Armstrong on this subject. Armstrong was defending Warren’s attempt as being “Missional” which he assured us was different from “emergent,” or “post-modern.” (Just as Johnny Cake is different from Corn-bread.) Armstrong insisted that Warren’s route is the way we have to go since the hegemony of Christian culture is dead. The idea Armstrong presented was that since Christians are no longer in the drivers seat culturally they must shape their gospel message to that reality.

Now once upon a time that meant that Christians shaped their gospel message to that reality by suffering persecution and martyrdom for the Gospel. But Armstrong’s idea seems to be that the way we shape the gospel message to this new post-Christian reality is by emptying the Gospel of its content. In short we must learn to be comfortable with the back of the cultural bus. John Armstrong said that unless we are willing to do that many of our young people are going to leave our Churches.

Rick Warren and John Armstrong being Evangelical leaders reveals that we are living in some dark times.