Category: Quotes & Commentary

Pietism And the Hyphenated Life

“Pietism no doubt, expressed the religious reaction of devout evangelicals agaisnt orthodox formalism, and it tendend to concentrate upon the doctrine of salvation and to develop Arminian rather than a Reformed doctrine of Grace. God’s offer of salvation was supposed to be made to all men and it was believed that Christ died for all mankind. Given such a doctrine of grace it is not surprising that pietists have tended, with a few notable exceptions, to think of religion as being mainly concerned with the salvation of the individual and with his spiritual state of mind and feelings. As a consequence Pietism has greatly assisted the secularization of Western Society as a whole, since its religious individualism takes for granted or ignores the structures of Church and State, seeking within society to build up significant religious cells. The main concern of Dutch pietists, as of Wesleyan pietists in England and America, became the salvation of one’s individual soul rather than of society as a whole. Instead of thinking that Christians should be concerned with the whole of life—business, political, educational and cultural, pietism demands the segregation of a certain sphere of life as peculiarly religious and teaches that the believer should concentrate his entire efforts upon cultivating subjective religious states of mind and feeling, as well as various personal devotional and ascetic disciplines. The larger questions of church and state and culture tend to become discounted, sometimes because of apocalyptic expectations, or because they are considered to be religiously neutral. As a result, the attention of the evangelical pietist tended to become concentrated upon personal rather than social morals, and the sins of the flesh have been more often feared than the spiritual sins, such as selfishness, pride, envy and jealousy.”

E. L. Hebden Taylor
The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, p. 29f.

What modern current Reformed movement are you reminded of when you read this quote?

Doing The Hard Work Of Nothing

In “Jesus + Nothing = Everything” Tchividjian writes, “Jesus won for me, I was free to lose” and “Jesus succeeded for me, I was free to fail” (p.24). Throughout the book Tchividjian encourages us to remove our attention from what we do in sanctification. He writes, “I think too much about how I’m doing, if I’m growing, whether I’m doing it right or not” (p.174). He tells us such thinking is wrong and will only make us “neurotic and self-absorbed” (p.174). After all, in Christ, he tells us, “it’s all said and done” (p.174).

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Contradiction alert

Here Tchividijan is writing a book telling people the right way to do it (growing in Christ) is by not worrying about whether one is doing it right. How is the prescription to do it right by not worrying about whether one is doing it right any different of a prescription then the one that teaches that doing it right is by worrying about doing it right? Tullian’s advice requires just as much work and is potentially just as promissory of failure. How does one know if one’s lack of worry is not enough lack of worry? Could we not begin to worry that we are not “not worrying” enough? Does Jesus’ not worrying about how His performance did or did not please the Father satisfy when we fail to preform well enough our not worrying work?

I know I regularly worry that I don’t not worry enough.

I fear Tchividijian is teaching me to be neurotic and self absorbed in all of his writing about the importance of my work of not worrying in sanctification.

The point is that Tullian is requiring me to do nothing and I am exhausting myself making sure that I do the good work of nothing in my sanctification.

If it really is all said and done then Tullian shouldn’t be writing books saying that we must not concentrate on the God pleasing work of “not doing.”

Further, if I’m free to fail and free to lose does that mean that if I win and succeed that somehow I have failed and lost because I didn’t fail and lose but if I was free to fail and lose and winning and succeeding is failing and losing then that means winning and succeeding is really something that I am free do to…. right? Or does this mean that God is only pleased with me when I fail and lose? And if God is only pleased with me when I fail and lose shouldn’t I try to please God by failing and losing all the time? But then I might worry that I am not losing and failing enough and God might be displeased with me… right?

One Characteristic Of Babel Humanistic Statism

Ironically, at the same time that humanistic statism de-personalizes life and man, it speaks often about ‘the Brotherhood of man’ a term from family life. This doctrine of brotherhood, however, is an intellectual concept and an abstraction. It has nothing to do with family life, even though the term ‘family of man’ is often used. This idea of the brotherhood refers to the statist integration of races, nationalities, and cultures to form a homogeneous blend in which all the distinctives of each are lost. The God given personal identities and ways of white, black Oriental, and other peoples are all offensive to these statists. They seek to create a humanity which has no personal identities but acts, responds, and functions in terms of social evolutionary plans. Theirs is a plan for death and they call it life.”

R. J. Rushdoony
The Roots of Reconstruction — pg. 323

What RJR is noting we might call “universal racism.” Universal racism would be that racism that treats people in an unloving way who do not agree that “integration of races, nationalities, and cultures to form a homogeneous blend in which all the distinctives of each are lost” is a good thing. Actually, the problem of Universal Racism is far more prevalent today then any other kind of racism

The Nations As Nations Have Their Place In The Kingdom Of God

http://chalcedon.edu/…/audio/inheritance-and-possession/

Question (Somewhat garbled)

One point of Scripture is it speaking of the unity of God’s people. How does that compare to the Nationalism of today?

Rushdoony Answers

The Bible is not saying it is going to be a one world order governmentally. That is the only way the modern mind can think of a world united — governmentally. It means rather, united in Christ without destroying the integrity of the various national groups because they have their place under God. Thus, there is no reason to believe that in God’s Kingdom on earth there will be no longer any Russians or Chinese. It does mean emphatically that they will be alike governed by the word of God. The principle of unity is Christ. It is not a World state. And this of course is where many groups like Armstrong’s group and others go sadly astray. They are insistent on seeing a one world state to come through either Christ’s premillennial return or through some kind of human agency with the British Israelites or the British Empire. These are all heretical views I believe.

RJR Lecture — Law and Life

http://chalcedon.edu/…/audio/inheritance-and-possession/

Go to the point where there is 3:45 left on the lecture

Dostoyevsky On The Goal Of Egalitarianism

Here is a classic description of the socialist concept of equality as described by Dostoyevsky in his “The Possessed.” It is referred to as “Shigalyovism.”

“The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As soon as there is family love, there is a desire for property. We shall throttle that desire: we shall unleash drunkenness, scandal, denunciations: we shall unleash unprecedented debauchery; we shall extinguish every genius in his infancy. Everything must be reduced to the common denominator, total equality.

Each belongs to all, and all to each. All are slaves and equal in slavery. In extreme cases it will mean defamation and murder, but the main thing is equality. First there will be a drop in the standard of education, in learning and talent. A high level of learning and talent is accessible only to the very brainy. We must abolish the brainy! The brainy couldn’t be anything other than despots and have always brought more debauchery than good. We will execute or exile them. We will cut out Cicero’s tongue, gouge out Copernicus’s eyes, stone Shakespeare to death — that Shigalyovism! Slaves must be equal: freedom and equality have never yet existed without despotism, but here must be equality in the herd, that Shigalyovism!

If after reading this quote one isn’t alarmed at how much we are seeing this come to fruition in our own communities there isn’t much hope to ever convince. The unleashing of debauchery is seen in the sexual agenda that is everywhere in the State schools. The desire to extinguish genius is seen in the policy that was “No Child Left Behind.” No one needs to be convinced regarding our drop in the standard of education. If we don’t see that, the only reason we can’t see that is because we have become part of the “drop.”