Category: From The Mailbag

Ask The Pastor — Hasn’t Constantinism Long Ended & Isn’t That A Good Thing?

Dear Pastor,

Wouldn’t you agree that there is no longer church and state unity / marriage, as it was from Theodosius (380-392 AD) to the Reformation and French Revolution (beginning of secular Europe culture which is hostile to the Christian religion) and American Revolution (separation of church and state, but not hostile to the Christian religion). Since then it has become more and more secular and pluralistic.

First, any reader of Iron Ink would know that I do not believe there is such a thing as “secular” if by secular someone means a culture, government, social order, economy, family life, education, law order, etc. that is un-governed and not beholden to and reflective of some theology, faith, or faith system. There never has been, nor will there ever be a secular something that is un-normed or un-conditioned by some theology or worldview. There is no view nor implementation of that view from theologically nowhere.

Second, the idea that there is no longer Church and State unity is utter nonsense. There never has been a time when Church and State hasn’t cooperated and there never will be. The Crown and the Mitre always walk together. It is never a question of whether Church and State will be joined at the hip but only a question of which religion Church and State will both be serving. Now, this is not the same thing as saying that Church and State will have the same functions or role. Biblical Christians have never advocated that. The Church has a role and function (dispenser of Word and Sacrament holding the Keys to the Kingdom) and the State has a role and function (dispenser of Justice while holding and handling the sword) but they always walk together.

In our current setting Church and State are walking together under the influence of the religion of humanism. The State, being the hammer for the humanist gods, determines how far the other Gods of the other religions are allowed to move in the public square. As such the State is the god over the gods. And the Church serving the State (in league with the State) are the government schools as the Priests there (Teachers) work with the catechism (curriculum) in order to catechize the children into their undoubted catholic humanist faith. There in the Government schools we find Word and Sacrament (free Lunch from the God – State in order to strengthen body and soul unto work in the humanist eschaton). Similarly, the State handles the sword and dispenses justice according to the humanist standard. The goal of both is to create a reality in defiance of God where the citizenry can live, and move, and have their being.

Church and state are not Separate in American culture and it is a unique R2K mistake to suggest that they ever were or are.

Ask The Pastor — Isn’t Postmillennialism Naive?

Brother Bret McAtee,

If the Calvinist System of thought has been around a few hundred years why aren’t things improving if it is the anwser, and why have the proponents of Calvinist thought, ie the presbyterians,fallen into liberalism as fast or faster than those of other systems? I think it is kind of strange to hear a Calvinist think that man is going to bring back Christ by providing Him a Christian world. Seems things are going the other way. I would be really discouraged if I thought it was because I wasn’t trying hard enough. Which leads to the question can we live the Christian life or are we sinners until death?

Steve,

Thanks for your questions. I hope I can give an answer that does justice to the seriousness behind their intent.

‎1.) Are you really arguing Steve that the last 100 years have not seen vast improvements? Why I’m old enough to remember my Grandmothers house with no running water and no indoor bathroom. We have had advances in medicine, technology, and science. Our quality and duration of life has increased markedly. So, I would say there clearly have been improvements and those improvements can be traced directly or indirectly to Biblical Christianity and a Biblical worldview.

2.) Presbyterians have fallen into Liberalism because they are sinners. Of course the problem isn’t with the faith itself. Our sin, as Presbyterians, doesn’t prove the inadequacy of our undoubted Catholic Christian Faith. Rather our sin as Presbyterians proves that we seldom live up to all we know to be true. Secondly, on this point, Biblical eschatology does not argue that the advance of the Kingdom is always evenly steadily upwards. We understand, that in God’s economy there are tides of prosperity that advance and decline, but like the tide that goes in and out we always see the tide coming in further up with each new high tide.

Here I paraphrase Robert E. Lee who summarizes nicely the Postmillennial understanding,

“The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is Christ’s Sovereignty in and over history that teaches us to hope.”

3.) Of course no Calvinist (Biblical Christian) thinks that he is, by his efforts, going to bring back Christ. No man who knows himself would ever think that. No, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in His people, often despite His people, who will do the work of conversion and will ready the world for Christ’s return. Remember I Cor. 15 “He must reign until He puts all things under His feet.” It is only after all things are under His feet (the world’s rebellion put down) that will find our benevolent and great Warrior King, the Lord Christ returning.

I look forward to that day. Even if it should not happen in my lifetime I look forward to doing my part to aid in the hastening of that day.

4.) Finally, the answer to your last question is, “yes.” We remain, throughout our lives, at the same time sinner and saint. We are not what we once were but we are not yet what we will one day be. Our obedience, by the Spirit’s sanctifying work is greater than it was, but not as great as it will be, and yet even when it is greater we will have to say “we are unprofitable servants, we have only done what we ought.”

Ask The Pastor — Do Genes Affect Culture?

Dear Pastor Bret,

Genes affect culture, Bret? Are you serious?

Bojidar Marinov

My Dear friend Bojidar,

Yes, genes affect culture. The great Rushdoony taught this idea himself.

“Ah, yes … uh, true, God has created the diversity of mankind and therefore each of the Christian cultures will begin with the sovereignty of God and the authority of His Word but there are areas where their particular talents and diversities will be expressed, so that, even as I, for example, have aptitudes in certain areas while a very dear friend of mine has aptitude in another area and is every bit as zealous for the Sovereignty of God as I am but when he talks in the area of sciences he loses me in about the second or third sentence. But he is applying the word of God in the context of his situation. Now that’s a little more extreme than cultures or nations, but there is no question that different peoples have different aptitudes and abilities. We tend today, just as I.Q. tests are today artificially constructed so that they will eliminate sexual differences (women will come out ahead in most fields except the two I mentioned) and racial differences because their are variations. People of one ethnic background will have marked abilities in one area and not as marked in other areas, but they don”t want to believe that there are these differences you see, therefore they try to eliminate them. Well, in a Godly culture we will consider those as blessings of God to be developed.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Lecture — The New Absolutism — 44:00 minute mark

Note, here Bojidar that the great RJR recognized that people of different ethnic backgrounds have different strengths and based on those differing strengths that are accounted for, in part, by their genetic inheritance, it is fairly obvious that genes affect culture. I am surprised that you would be surprised over such a simple idea Bojidar.

To suggest that individuals and peoples are only different because of the propositions they think is to deny our human-ness and the concrete families, places, and times that God has ordained for us. When Christ called me and set me apart He called me and set me apart as a “McAtee.” My Christian faith has not obliterated my “McAteeness.” I am, to be sure, a new man in Christ, but the new man that I am remains me. My memories are not erased. My genetics are not altered. The nurture and nature of my existence is what is redeemed.

I am my Father’s and my Grandfather’s son. Now, they were not Christian and I am Christian but I still retain, often-times most unfortunately, their strengths, their weaknesses, their predilections, and dispositions. That is part of what it means to be human. No matter how much I put off the old man and put on the new man created in the image of God at the end of that sanctification process it is still a McAtee who has been sanctified. It is not good anthropology to suggest that who God has created us to be by nature and nurture is obliterated by belief(s). It is my conviction that when we seek to obliterate our concrete human-ness with Christianity we become gnostic by the affirmation that the propositions that a person thinks in their head is alone what makes them what they are. I am not just the propositions I think, though I am never less then that. I am also part of a family, and part of a people. Now, to be sure the propositions I think (my beliefs) will completely re-arrange the way I lean into life (I sure hope that people would see a difference between me and my Father and Grandfather) but that leaning will still be done as a McAtee, as a descendant of white Scot-Irish Europeans, and as a son of the West. Good Christian, non-gnostic anthropology requires me to think this way.

So yes, seriously Bojidar, genes affect culture. Anyone who denies this is flirting with gnosticism.

Ask The Pastor — Where Do You Get The Idea That Marxists Believe That Distinctions Need To Be Erased?

Dear Pastor,

I ask you, where exactly in Marxism do you see any notion of “all distinctions need to be erased”? Seriously, are you so hopelessly self-blinded to not see that Marxism never ever ever advocated any “erasing of differences”?

Bojidar Marinov

My Dear Friend Bojidar,

Allow me to let Fredrich Engels answer your question.

‎”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 on the matter Bojidar.

“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

Or perhaps 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:

 

You see Bojidar even if I didn’t have this quote from Engels, and Khrushchev and Marx  in order to refute you I could still appeal to the implications of Marxism with its denial of private property. When one traces out the end result that must occur from the beginning principle, which denies private property, one easily sees that the loss of private property — which is one of the planks of Communism — eventually implies lost of heritage since one’s heritage is the private property of one’s self.

Clearly we see with this quote of Engels that it has always been the agenda of Communists to create a Babel reality where all cultures as well as all ethnicities are lost in the miasma that is the consequence of “integrating into the void.” Now, other literature informs us that there will be an uber-elite that will be concerned about distinction and even segregation from the miasma melange that their policies have created, but for the herd ethnic and cultural distinctions will be wiped out by way of policy.

This is also perfectly consistent for those who have denied the Creator vs. Creature distinction. If one denies God (as the Marxist does) then one denies the most basic of distinctions and once the most basic of distinctions is denied then all other human distinctions will be denied as well. This dissolving of distinctions, that Engels speaks of, is merely one more consequence of the attack on the most primal distinction of all and that is the distinction between God and Man.

I hope you will see with the Engel’s quote and the rest of my answer that it is not I that is self-blinded.

Ask The Pastor — Isn’t The Family Whatever We Decide It Is?

Dear Pastor,

Your insistence that a family is a group of people who have blood ties seems restrictive to me. After all, “Home is where the heart is.” Also, your insistence that Lesbians can not love one another strikes me as uncharitable. Two women can embrace one another in love no differently than a man and a woman can embrace one another in love. You can have fun with your idea of your family and I’ll have fun with mine.

Peace, Love, and Happiness,

Josephine Calvin

Dear Josephine,

One could easily hear the strains of relativism in your statement, “Have fun w/ your idea of your family and I’ll have fun with mine.”

“Your truth is ok for you and my truth is ok for me.”

But God clearly says that Lesbianism is sin and that such people will in no wise enter into the Kingdom of God (See Romans 1 & Galatians 5). Secondly, Scripture consistently displays family as a blood bond normally characterized by a shared belief system, though the aspect of a shared belief system is quickly slipping away in our contemporary setting. The exception that Scripture makes for family as a group of people sharing a bond of blood, in terms of family, is legal adoption.

It might be a proverb that, “Home is where the heart is” but in a Christian normal world, allowing for the exceptions that inevitably occur, the heart would find the home in blood family.

I looked up several definitions of “Family,” and they all included the idea of blood bonds. One just can’t make up the meaning of words as they go. A belief that one can is expressive of post-modernism.

Here is one definition of family,

1. a group descended from a common ancestor.

People can not make themselves a family unit anymore then they can make themselves a school of fish. Now, certainly arrangements exist where persons are functioning as a family, but the fact that they are functioning as a family puts the proof to the reality that they are not family. Otherwise the metaphor would not have to be used. So, yes people who truly care for each other can function as a family but that does not make them a family as a family is a group descended from a common ancestor.

Now, I know there are huge movements out there that are trying to redefine family to mean whatever group of people may assemble on any given day. But if such a movement succeeds in redefining the word and concept of family the loss will be a stable meaning to the word and will introduce even more instability to our social order. In point of fact I would say that the attempt to redefine family is a subtle attack on the Christian definition of family in favor of a post-modern definition of family.

There is no possibility of “Peace, Love, and Happiness,” where man walks outside of God’s revelation found in Scripture.