Category: ecclesiology

With Apologies to James Stuart Blackie

Twas the thirty-first of August, in the twenty twenty-five,
On the Sabbath morn from the Grace Mosaic PCA Dive
Rev. Joel Littlepage let it be known that he’d play Rome’s fool
Sadly the spirit of Jenny Geddes was nowhere with a stool

Irwyn Ince, with Elders and Shepherdesses cheering approval
Never thought of Rev. Littlepage’s rebuke or removal
Never thought of any Presbyterian or Christian rule
Neither was there one Jenny Geddes Shepherdess with a stool

Rev. Littlepage mounted the Pulpit with solemn clergy tone
In twenty-three minutes he explained how he had grown
“Seeking the Lord’s face”, he said, “has me moving old school”
And nobody greeted his Romish words with Jenny Geddes stool

Rev. Littlepage spoke about his ministry as “assigned vocation”
For the time he spent during his Presbyterian long duration
No laughter was heard, nor was there sounds of deserved ridicules
And no denunciations of Geddes were heard nor her flying stools

Then pops up the head of the PCA, MNA, Irwyn Ince to speak
With praise upon his lips for the Joel Littlepage Papist geek
The effusiveness of Ince’s praise caused the MNA chief to drool
And still there was no shuffling sound that promised hurling stools

But the story is still not yet told, the affront not yet fully explained
The honor of our Lord Christ had not yet reached total stain
This papist Littlepage now serves the Lord’s table as a Romish tool
And still there is no multiplicity of hurled Jenny Geddes stools

Now we come to the laying on of hands upon family Littlepage
“Dear God we pray you will bless the future of this alienage
And bless wife Melissa as she works for a sodomite Democrat fool”
Somewhere Jenny was weeping over the absence of just one stool

And thus no mighty deed was done by a modern Jenny fan
No removal of foppish Popery from the Washington DC PCA land
But the time is coming and now is when Romish ghouls
Will once again be greeted with Jenny Geddes famous stools

Kevin DeYoung’s Attempt To Institutionalize Polytheism In The Westminster Confession

There has been a debate that has arisen in “conservative” “Presbyterian” circles that finds a certain party in these denominations insisting that their founding revised 1788 American Westminster Confession of faith (WCF) was a repudiation of the 1646 Original WCF on the matter of how the Civil Magistrate is related to the claims of Biblical Christianity. The argument being advanced by Judas Goats like Kevin DeYoung is that in 1788 American Presbyterians had become recalcitrant in extending Establishmentarian religious authority to the state and consequently drafted a “revision” that had “more robust notions of religious liberty,” than what had previously existed in the original WCF. In the mind of the Quislings like DeYoung the American adaptation represent movement of the Reformed from historically Reformed position to a more Anabaptist/Libertarian understanding on the subject of Magistrates. DeYoung’s position putatively allows for more religious toleration. More religious toleration is, by definition, less religious toleration for those whose religion teaches that Christ and His Word is to be King over the civil Magistrate and that the Civil Magistrate is to be a “Nursing father to the Christian Church (Isaiah 49:23).”

We see here then that DeYoung and his pirate crew is not really pursuing a course that leads to an expanding of religious toleration but rather DeYoung and his pirate crew is pursuing a course that diminishes toleration for Biblical Christianity, with its claim that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and that all Kings must submit to Him. That DeYoung is on such a course is seen in his own words;

“As new debates about the proper relationship between church and state continue to multiply, it’s important to recognize that the two versions of WCF 23:3 represent two different and irreconcilable views of the civil magistrate.”

Dr. Kevin DeYoung
Presbyterian “Minister”

In DeYoung’s pursuit of revising the 23:3 WCF revision so that it is interpreted in a more Anabaptist/polytheistic fashion DeYoung is staking out the territory that disallows 23:3 to be read in such a way wherein the civil Magistrate is to be uniquely committed to upholding the first table of the law, while requiring the Magistrate to be more of a Pontifex Maximus putatively representing the interests of all the religions in the Republic. Of course we know that such a Pontifex Maximus doesn’t really represent the interest of all religions in the Republic because such a Magistrate could not represent the religion that said all the religions in the Republic except Christianity must, in light of the 1st commandment, be abominated by the Christian Magistrate.

One humorous aspect of this debate is that the American WCF, even as revised in 23:3 clearly still supports Christian Magistrates as we see in the Westminster Larger Catechism 191 where the Catechism answers “What does thy Kingdom come mean,” answering, in part with the statement that, “the church be …  countenanced and maintained by the civil magistrate.” My friends, the Christian church can not be countenanced and maintained by the Christian civil magistrate if he, at the same time, is countenancing and maintaining all other pagan religions, for to countenance and maintain a pagan religion would be at the same time to discountenance and pull down the Christian church. Caesar can not serve two or more masters.

Pertaining to the WLC the above is not all. Previously, in teaching on the 5th commandment the WLC states that our superiors include not only “father and mother” but also those superiors as located in church and commonwealth, and then goes on to teach that all these superiors must provide “all things necessary for body and soul (Q. 124, 129).” This must as a shock to Rev. DeYoung, to think that the Magistrate must, as in their defined role as Magistrate, provide all things necessary for the soul, since for DeYoung the Magistrate is to be the Polytheistic Pontifex Maximus.

If humor is part of the landscape for this discussion nobody did a better stand up routine then when R2K guru, R. Scott Clark — he of “Recovering the Reformed Confessions” fame — recently offered on X that DeYoung is correct about the WCF being a complete revision of the WCF 1646 in an anti-Establishmentarian direction and that the inconsistencies of the WCF with the WLC could be explained by the fact that the Americans in 1788 just forgot to go ahead and change the WLC so as to be consistent with the 1788 WCF change. As we all know … remembering details can be a tricky thing.

Of course all this is being driven by the push in Reformed circles, since the days of Meredith Kline, to turn the Reformed faith into a R2K playground. Increasingly the Seminaries are embracing R2K and this sudden pursuit to officially change the WCF, in a Anabaptist/Libertarian direction, is just one more expression of Radical Two Kingdom “theology.” By insisting that the Magistrate has no obligation to the Christian church to be unto the Christian church a uniquely nursing father, R2K succeeds in their ongoing attempt to make all of life, in the words of D. G. Hart, a hyphenated life. If DeYoung’s effort succeeds to reinterpret 23:3 of the WCF the result will be an even more retreatist Christianity. Reformed Christianity will more and more be a religion that belongs to the catacombs. If DeYoung is successful Christianity will increasingly retreat from the public square.

DeYoung’s Christianity is the Christianity cherished by every polytheist in the public square. If Michael Servetus were alive today he might have taken DeYoung’s methodology to make room for his Socinianism in Geneva. The Mooselimbs, Talmudists, Hindus, etc. in America are all cheering on Dr. Kevin DeYoung’s attempt to officially strip the WCF of any notion that it might support Christian Nationalism. After all, if the 1646 WCF is correct then, by necessity Christian Nationalism is true. If Christian Magistrates are required by the WCF then of course that can not be apart from a Christian nation.

We should end by noting what a nation looks like if Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung gets his way. Such a nation would by definition have to be polytheistic. The kind of pluralism that DeYoung envisions cannot exist apart from the religious polytheism that drives political/sociological pluralism. It is an odd position to take when we are increasingly seeing what pluralism looks like in these united States. For example, recently in Minneapolis, a city ordinance was passed that allows for the public Mooslimb call to prayer 5 times a day regardless of the time that the call to prayer is required. Another example is found in Dearborn, Michigan where the Mooselimb Mayor hired a Mooselimb Chief of police who has recently arrested a non-Mooselimb for posting something on social media that was foolishly threatening in a vague manner Mooselimbs who were marching in Dearborn shouting “Death to America.” Another example of the implications of Rev. Dr. DeYoung’s heretical war against the 1st commandment would be the requirement of a state to allow Baphomet statues in state capitals such as was the case in Iowa in 2023. In Rev. Dr. DeYoung’s world such realities would not only have to be tolerated by Christians but they would also have to be applauded as part of the doctrinal foundation upon which Christianity is based.

If Benedict Arnolds like Kevin DeYoung are successful there will be no public roadblock to blasphemies of every shape and size. DeYoung’s views institutionalize Polytheism in the Westminster Confession and institutionalize polytheism in formerly Christian America. It is one more nail in the coffin of any notion of Christendom.

Keep in mind that Kevin DeYoung is the chap who is heading up the committee in the PCA taking up the subject of Christian Nationalism. Given this “man’s” views what do you think that PCA committee is going to produce as it speaks to the issue of Christian Nationalism?

The Current Common Ground Between Marxism & Christianity

It is well known that the Marxism/Communism of the 20th century was a religion that required of men everything. It required their dissolution of their human-ness in order to be re-designed into the “New Soviet Man.” The New Soviet Man was a man with no allegiances, no identity, no distinctiveness, except as set against the all Sovereign Party/State. The Marxists/Communists so believed this that man became an interchangeable cog in the machinery of the state/party. Practically, what this meant was the destruction of the family for the reason that the family gave one an identity other than the Party. This meant the destruction of maleness and femaleness as sexuality & gender was irrelevant for the New Soviet Man.  This destruction of maleness and femaleness was demonstrated in the Soviet effort during WW II where 5% of the Soviet troops (appx. 800K) were comprised of women who fought as snipers, pilots, and as medical personnel. Per Communist doctrine man qua man was a distinction-less, identity-less, being that was to find his whole identity only in terms of the State/Party.

Of course the same principle applied to man in terms of his racial-ethnic identity. Man’s creaturely distinctive of race, ethnicity, family were irrelevant categories for the New Soviet man. The State/Party was to serve as the the New Soviet Man’s race. One way this was pursued in the USSR, by Stalin was by means of mass deportations of different people groups from one area of the USSR to another. The goal was to so dilute ethnic identity with their distinctive cultural lifestyles by thrusting them amidst new locales and different peoples.

Stalin, and his henchman, Lavrentiy Beria (Head of Soviet NKVD), pursued these mass deportations as a way to suppress any coordinated uprisings by particular concentrated people groups protesting Stalin’s totalitarianism. Such deportations also served the purpose of creating a visibly observable internationalism that bespoke a uniform identity of all Soviet peoples. Between the 1930s-1950s in the Soviet Union approximately 3.5 million from 40 different ethnic groups were relocated (deported) from their previous homeland in order to discover and enjoy become part of the New International man.

All of this is consistent with the explicit statements by the Marxists/Communists on their intent of eliminating all national distinctions so that a new man could be created — a new man whose only identity was the Communist Party/State apparatus. Here are but a few of their own words;

”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

Or we might consult one Nikita Khrushchev;

“Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

And Marx himself,

“Even the natural differences within species, like racial
differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”
 
K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
 
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A

Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

What we have seen here thus is that Communist/Marxist Godlessness has always sought to destroy the distinctive creaturely stamp that God has placed upon men at their birth. Gone are gender/sexual distinctives in the Soviet state. Gone are racial/ethnic distinctions in the Soviet State. Gone are family distinctions in the Soviet State.

Mussolini’s words here describe perfectly this totalitarian arrangement;

‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’

Now, I have a larger purpose in pointing all this out, as interesting as it might be by itself. My larger purpose here is to suggest that modern Christianity and the modern Church has become an ape to this kind of Soviet understanding of man with its repeated denunciations of the reality of races, ethnicities, and clans. Indeed, so much like the Soviets of yesteryear have become that churches now are routinely defrocking, disbarring, and disciplining ministers who give even the slightest inclination of believing that the Christian’s Union with Christ does not take away their human distinctives of sexuality, family, race or ethnic belongingness.

The cases of Michel Hunter, Michael Spangler, and my own are somewhat known now. However, other men such as Rev. Zach Garris and Rev. James Baird have likewise been given a good amount of official grief for their views. Then there are cases like Tim Harris, and Ryan Louis Underwood that have not received the publicity that they should have received. Then going way back, there is the case of Neil Payne and Todd Mahaffy where the SPLC was brought in, in order to substantiate the charges “racism” brought by an Alienist PCA minister. Fast forward to this past spring and the RPCNA, ARP, and PCA all adopted Soviet like language in order to condemn that which the Soviet Politburo would have heartily agreed. The Reformed churches keep trying to put a lid on all this but the lid keeps popping off.  Now combine all this with the inability of the PCA to bring discipline against the self-confessed celibate but still sodomite Rev. Greg Johnson and we begin to see that the contemporary Reformed Denominations, in principle, look an awful lot like they are in league with the now defunct Soviet Union in creating the “New Soviet Man.”

The Modern Reformed Church and Reformed clergy, at least in the matter of trying to erase God ordained creaturely distinctives because “since we’re united with Christ we are all one” is singing out of the same hymnbook as Robespierre, Lenin, Marx, Stalin, and Mao. The Modern Reformed Church in its shared embrace with the Marxism/Communism doctrine of egalitarianism is testifying against itself by insisting that “grace destroys nature.” It would have been better if the Soviets had succeeded in this egalitarian attempt rather than our being in the position where the Reformed Churches of Jesus Christ may well be successful in this same effort where the Marxists thus far have not been successful.

Having said all this, I am glad to admit that it is possible to make an idol out of one’s family or ethnicity or race, but having admitted that this is possible is it really the case that the modern West is in danger of sliding into that abyss? I mean, how much ancestor worship do you come across daily in the non third world immigrant parts of the West? It has gotten so bad that there are those who now insist that they have more in common with a Nigerian Grandmother who is Christian than they have with their own unbelieving Mother. Honor thy Father and Mother much?

The modern Reformed church needs to return to the principle that grace restores nature. It needs to admit that churches that practice the homogenous principle are not in some kind of grave sin. I mean, the modern Reformed church if just find and dany with the homogenous principle as applied to Korean or Hmong Churches or even Black church but suddenly it begins to blanch when white Westerners pursue the same thing. The modern Reformed church needs to embrace men like Dabney and Thornwell, Palmer and Girardeau, Morton Smith and John Edwards Richards, Michael Spangler and Michael Hunter, Zach Garris and James Baird. The modern Reformed church needs to quit with its racial and Marxist witch hunts that are determined to eliminate every bit of legitimate racial realism that exists within their confines.

Kinism has always been part and parcel of the definition of Christianity through the ages. The two long anthologies “Who Is My Neighbor,” and “A Survey of Racialism in Christian Sacred Tradition” has made it indisputable that those Christians who understand that Kinism is just Christianity 101 are standing in the tradition of believing what all Christian at all times and in all places have believed.

If the Modern Reformed Church does not change its course on this matter historians of the future are going to look back on this time and describe it as “The Marxist Captivity of the Church.”

 

 

 

Machen’s Christianity & Liberalism & The Contemporary Church

“A terrible crisis unquestionably has arisen in the Church. In the ministry of evangelical churches are to be found hosts of those who reject the gospel of Christ. By the equivocal use of traditional phrases, by the representation of differences of opinion as though they were only differences about the interpretation of the Bible, entrance into the Church was secured for those who are hostile to the very foundations of the faith.”
 
 J. Gresham Machen
Christianity & Liberalism

One point covered yesterday in Sunday School as we continue to work through Machen’s “Christianity & Liberalism” is that Liberals are forever accusing Biblical Christians of having a “mean” God and a “mean” faith. Their reasons for their existence, in part, is to give us a kinder and gentler Christianity. However, the ironic part here is that the Christianity of the liberal is an example of “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” Liberal Christianity, that seeks to get rid of all the “cringe factor” in Biblical Christianity is, in point of fact, the cruelest and meanest “Christianity” going. It yields a God who cannot save, a Christ that is not God, a salvation that is only experiential and emotional, and a anthropology that tells man he is basically good and just needs a few tweeks. It is the meanest of all faiths because it leaves men damned.

Machen was dealing with men who had emptied Christianity of its historical and doctrinal meaning and were refilling it with a content that was not Christian in the least. We fight the same battle today in our Churches with that problem. “Christianities” like R2K, Federal Vision, Dispensationalism, New Perspective on Paul, Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, Pentecostalism, all empty Christianity of its original historical and doctrinal content in favor of a redefined Christianity that is no Christianity.

Machen wrote “Christianity and Liberalism,” but today we could write books titled “Christianity and R2K,” “Christianity and Federal Vision,” “Christianity and Arminianism,” etc. because it is all bogus Christianity and it is all mean and cruel to those who embrace it.

A Few Words On Worship

 The pull towards the glamorous and the exciting suggests that modern Christians continue to believe that the action is where the frenzy is. Worshipers still want the titillating, filled as it is with emotion. This accounts for why the local church service in the last 40 or so years has aped the tent revival feel with emotionally arresting music, vapid self-help sermons, and “spirit led” eccentricities. The reports one will get from such a “service” is how powerfully the spirit moved or how one could feel God’s presence.

I wonder though if God more often find us in the seemingly most barren of worship settings where a small group of people are gathered to sing simple psalms, in response to God’s greeting? Is the worship service characterized by Word and Sacrament more to be desired than the “worship” service that has all the glitz and glory that can be collected by drama teams, praise bands, and liturgical dance?

Rarely, does someone talk about how awe-inspiring it was to attend a Sunday worship service where God greets His people, where God’s people are privileged to hear God’s law, where confession of sin is made and where God speaks gospel absolution through His minister to comfort His contrite people. Rarely, do we hear people talk about the glory found in the Word faithfully broken from the pulpit, or about the presence of God in an infant baptism or in the fact that God condescended to lift us into the heavenlies so as to feed us eternal life in the Eucharist.

Christ meets us in the humblest of circumstances. He meets us in water. He meets us in bread and wine. He meets us in the Word preached. These are where Christ promises to feed us unto life eternal. It’s not as if those realities can’t be present in the context of large gathering… they certainly can be. However, more often than not all the marketing, sociology, polling and crowd psychology that goes into attracting large numbers means that the theology of the cross has been emptied out before the theology of glory show begins.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing automatically superior about small churches. They can fail just as spectacularly as large churches. The difference however is often in the mindset found in larger churches in the need to put on a show. Larger churches that have to pack them in, in order to keep the lights on are more prone to give a theology of glory in order to keep the wheels turning.

When it comes to worship maybe the simple and comparatively weak elements of a vertical liturgy, combined with Word and Sacrament are more to be desired than creating a mood via music and the most recent sociological technique known to really pack them in. It seems like we expect so much from our worship teams and yet we receive so little.

Years ago I read a letter by J. R. R. Tolkien to his son Christopher. The gist of it was counsel from a father to his son to look for God in places of worship that would be defined by our standards as weak and beggarly. It is often in the unexpected places that the Lord Christ condescends by His Spirit to revive the hearts of the weary by the means of water and bread and wine and the Word preached. This is the theology of the Cross. This is God using the foolishing things of the world to confound the wise and the things that are not to confound the things that are.

God is not interested in our emotions except as those emotions are the residue of minds that have clenched down hard on the Word preached. The Lord Christ is not primarily interested in what we get from worship. The Lord Christ is primarily interested in His people giving Him glory, honor and praise in worship. Worship is not about us. Worship is about the triune God, the sovereign over the whole universe. Yet, though Worship is primarily about our giving of praise, God condescends and comes near to us and bless us with Word and Sacrament and feeds us unto life eternal. Only in such a manner is our faith increased with the result that we become a blessing to God and to others.

Our Christianity in the West is a thousand miles wide but a quarter inch deep and this is in large part because there is no substance to us. As C. S. Lewis put it, “We are men without chests.” We are a shallow people and we are shallow, in part, because we have pursued in our worship a theology of glory over being satisfied with a theology of the cross. We are a shallow people in part because in our current worship arrangements we do not feast on the Word, preferring instead to pursue sugar highs found in vacuous music and simpleton horizontal sermons. A people will never rise higher than the god they serve and the god we serve in the West right now is a very small god as seen in and by the worship that we are attracted to and that we offer up. Our theology communicates a small god and our doxology reflects that.

In the words of an anonymous writer on social media;

“Luther diagnosed this long ago. The reason we flock to the spectacular and ignore the ordinary is because we are drawn to a theology of glory—we seek God in what dazzles, impresses, and moves our emotions. But God does not promise to be found in the showy things of our own making. He hides Himself under weakness. This is the theology of the cross. Baptism looks like nothing—just water. Preaching sounds like just words. The Supper appears as simple bread and wine. And the church? Small, unimpressive, overlooked. But these are the appointed places where the living Christ gives Himself to sinners. These are the means by which the Holy Spirit delivers salvation. These are the true high places of worship. The tragedy is that what God calls precious, we often find boring. What heaven calls glorious, we treat as mundane. God is not hiding in stadium lights and fog machines. He is found where He has promised to be—among the humble means of grace, in the midst of His visible Church. Do not despise the weak-looking things. That’s where Christ is.”