Category: Politics

Dr. Kevin DeYoung’s Six Silly Questions

“A Reformed understanding of human nature should lead one to grant the civil magistrate less power in matters of religion, not more.”

 

Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung

Proof that having a Ph.D. doesn’t mean Jack Shinola

A Reformed understanding of the nature of reality should lead Kevin and all people to understand there is no such thing as one magistrate who is more or less religious than some other magistrate. All magistrates are equally religious. All magistrates push the state religion on the people. There is no “less” or “more” when it comes to power in matters of religion. There may be different means and ways for the magistrate to use his power in matters of religion but it is never a matter of “less power,” or “more power,” in matters of religion.

Now, it is true that some magistrates hide the fact from themselves that they are pushing an official state religion while other magistrates step up to the mic and say it out loud. But regardless, whether the magistrate is hiding from himself his religious pushing or whether the magistrate is embracing his advocacy openly, all magistrates push their religion in the same way. This is due to the fact that religion is a hopelessly inescapable concept. It is never a matter of either pushing or not pushing one’s religion as magistrate. It is only a matter of which religion will the magistrate push.

Let’s use an example. In one case the Magistrate might force the citizenry to pay a tax to support a state established church. In another case, such as our own here in the States, the Magistrate says he isn’t doing that. However, the truth of the reality is that the Magistrate is still forcing you to pay a tax to support the state established church. The gimmick is that the Magistrate here has figured out a way wherein you don’t know that you are paying a tax to support a state church. In order to fool you into thinking you don’t have a state established church here in this place where putatively, “the Magistrate has less powers over matters of religion,” the magistrate has hidden from you the fact that he indeed has great power over religious matters because he is taxing you to support the state church and that tax is found in every nickel and dime that goes to government (public) schools. Those government funded schools are in point of fact state churches wherein the state established religion is catechized into children from morning to late afternoon.

So, Rev. DeYoung is just flat out in error. We should say instead;

“A Reformed understanding of the nature of reality should lead one to understand that civil magistrates will always have the same amount of power when it comes to matters of religion, though some magistrates will hide that power from themselves and the citizenry better than other magistrates.”

Because there is no such thing as neutrality, the magistrate is always committed all the time to some God, god, or god concept. There is no lesser and greater. There is only the reality.

DeYoung, despite his good intentions, is not giving us Reformed theology here. To think that it was possible for a Reformed magistrate to have “less power in matters of religion” is to introduce a diminishing of God’s sovereignty as it relates to the state. If God is sovereign, as Reformed theology teaches, then God’s sovereignty ought to be explicitly brought to the fore in the public square by those magistrates ruling in as His vassals. To argue that Christian magistrates should somehow be hemmed in from being “too Christian” in their rule is to deny the sovereignty of God. De Young is giving us here, not only bad anthropology, but also bad theology proper.

DeYoung needs to muse on Van Til;

“The attempt to bring about a neutral culture, in which all religions and philosophies are equally tolerated, is in reality an attempt to dethrone the living God and to enthrone man in His place. There is no neutrality; every culture is either for Christ or against Him.”

When DeYoung argues for less power in religious matters he is arguing that the Magistrate might have the ability to be more neutral in religious matters. DeYoung is not arguing for a Reformed understanding. DeYoung is arguing for a anti-Reformed understanding.

Musings On Political Secularism

Political secularism, if by secularism one means that there is an absence of God(s) that is/are driving the actions of governmental business is an impossibility. No man or magistrate engages reality apart from a commitment to some God, gods, or god concept. Everything the political powers do is done with the tip of the cap (whether consciously or unconsciously) to some god(s) of some copybook heading.

Because this is so, the Biblical Christian advocates and champions the crown rights of King Jesus to rule explicitly over the political affairs of men. Of course, even if wicked magistrates are ruling, they are ruling by God’s divine decree but that fact doesn’t change the reality that wicked magistrates must be called on to rule according to the precepts of Jesus Christ found in His Word.

The doctrine of common grace, if it is held, does not change any of this. One can believe that in common grace God can do relative good through wicked magistrates and still believe that wicked magistrates are required to Kiss the Son lest God be angry and the wicked magistrate perishes in the way.

Secularism, as it is currently embraced, which is a form of pluralism, which in turn is an expression of polytheism, is not a political arrangement that any Biblical Christian can be comfortable with without being disobedient to the crown rights of King Jesus.

There is an implication here that people are not going to like. If we, as Christians are not to embrace secularism as what pleases the God of the Bible then we are not allowed to vote for candidates who will continue the secular arrangement wherein God is not pleased. We can hardly, consistently, oppose secularism and keep pulling levers for people who will continue on with secularism.

From The Mailbag; “Pastor, Aren’t You Being Unreasonable?”

Joshua Ambassador asked;

“The practical question in the debate is this: Nearly everyone in society is unregenerate today, spiritually blind, and suppressing the truth. What basis can there be, then, for law and justice?”

Bret responds,

There can be no basis for law and justice if we compromise with the heathen. Indeed, compromising with the heathen means “non-law,” and “injustice.” Let the heathen compromise with Biblical Christians.

The basis of any social order must be God’s Law Word enforced by Magistrates. The current humanist “Law and justice” is enforced on me by the Magistrate. Why shouldn’t we advocate that God’s Law and Justice be enforced upon the heathen by Christian Magistrates? Is God so small that we must wait until the Christ haters agree to be ruled by God’s law in the civil realm?  This is the Usus politicus sive civilis  of the law. This the understanding that the law serves the commonwealth or body politic as a force to restrain sin.

 
JA asked,

When people who are new to the debate hear the arguments of presuppositionalists, it sounds like they are saying that all the unregenerate are so willfully blind that it’s pointless to even try to come to a common agreement with them about what is right and wrong. The basis for Law, justice, and government in society can’t exist. Therefore Christians should go to some uninhabited place and form their own society.

BLMc responds

Because all ground is common ground (God’s ground) it is not pointless to pray and expect conversion. At the same time it is true that no ground is neutral ground. Since no ground is neutral ground we must not yield any ground to the unregenerate as if they have deed, title, or right to that ground. All must yield to Christ’s Lordship in every area because every piece of ground is the Kings.

If the heathen are given the whip hand though, it is true that the basis of Law, justice, and government in society can’t exist. This because increasingly obvious as the antithesis works out its implications on both sides. Therefore non-Christians should Kiss the Son, lest they perish in the way.

If you compromise with the heathen, the end will ALWAYS eventually be increasing heathenism and humanist anti-Christ law.

Let the heathen go look for uninhabited lands to live in.

Look… it is either rule or be ruled. We can rule by God’s glorious law – and this despite the heathen screaming like stuck pigs, or we can be ruled by Old Slewfoot’s hobnail ruinous law that seeks to maim, kill, and destroy.

Whose law would you be ruled by?

JA wrote,

Yes, the Pilgrims did that but there was a lot more land available then. And plenty of Christians have to “seek the peace of the city where they are captives” (Jeremiah 29 from memory), which surely involves co-operating with the unregenerate and coming to some kind of agreement with them about how the city/community/nation should be governed.

BLMc responds

Cooperate with the unregenerate on these matters? Isn’t that defined as sin? Let the unregenerate co-operate with me.

2025 Election Night Political Analysis

A little political analysis from someone who never voted for Trump yet is sympathetic to what MAGA types thought they were getting with Trump.

Democrats are trying to sell this election cycle as a repudiation of MAGA.

But think about that claim for a moment.

In New Jersey you have a traditionally deep blue state. DEEP BLUE. In 2024 NJ voted 52% for Camel Harris while Trump received 46%. We see here that the Republicans improved their vote in NJ. The fact that the Republican Gov. candidate came within 3 points of the DEM winner is not a repudiation of MAGA but should be interpreted as huge trouble for DEMS going forwards in states that are not as deep blue.

Virginia in the 2024 election cycle was a mirror image of NJ in terms of percentage of vote going to each candidate. Harris wins Vg. in 2024 and the DEMS win the Gov. race in Vg handily. Winsome Earl-Sears was not a good candidate to run as Republican in Vg., which IMO explains her thorough trouncing. Still, a blue state went blue. If this is a repudiation of MAGA it is a repudiation by states that have consistently been repudiating MAGA and so it tells us nothing about the political temperature of the nation.
New York city is one of the most blue cities in the nation…. and that’s saying a ton. The fact that Mamdani beats Cuomo is not a repudiation of MAGA but a repudiation of sanity.

One tidbit from these elections is that the Democratic party is now owned by its most extreme left (Marxist) wing. Mamdani’s win was a repudiation of the old guard Schumer, Pelosi, Cuomo, and even Hakeem Jeffries. Jeffries is now going to be taking marching orders from AOC and the squad. Mamdani’s victory in NYC means you’ll be seeing more of these Marxists candidates being offered up by the Democratic party. The only way that will change is if they are soundly trounced in subsequent elections.
Another reality these elections demonstrated again is how deeply divided the country is. These Marxists hate the shallow Republicans. Their hate is only intensified when one moves beyond the neo-con wing of the Republican party to consider the ever growing Groyper contingent in the Republican party.

I believe we are clearly at a point where there is no longer a center in American politics. When you add to the above that Virginia put a man into the Attorney General’s office who was exposed as wishing murder upon an opponent and death for that opponent’s children it is clear that there is no center… no moderate position … no room for compromise among the hard left and the hard right.

How far are we away from re-enacting street fights between latter day Brown shirts and latter day KPD (Communists)? We’ve already seen some of that in Charlottesville, Virginia a few years ago. It would be easy to characterize what happened to the Kyle Rittenhouse event as a light version of Brown Shirts vs. KPD. The largely unopposed rioting following the George Floyd suicide was a case of the Marxists being set loose to burn cities.

We have a serious problem here that our elections are revealing to those with eyes to see. We have to take the mindset that if Christian Nationalists don’t triumph over the Marxists we who consider ourselves Christian Nationalists (and who the Marxists consider Fascists) will have to start thinking about life in resurrected gulags.

Triumph is not going to come by way of voting for either side of the equation.