Quotes & Commentary – Page 18

The Basis Of Our Political & Legislative Positions … McAtee contra DeYoung

“”That is to say, our political and legislative positions cannot be determined simply by noting that the Bible calls something a sin and therefore that sin should be illegal. Further considerations about the common good, natural law, human rights, the unfolding of redemptive history, and the nature and scope of the state must come into play. I do not think the state should recognize gay marriage (so called), but my justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.”

– Rev. Kevin DeYoung

1.) It is true that not all sins are crimes or should be legislated against as crimes but unfortunately Rev. DeYoung does not articulate that distinction which leaves his assertion confusing and open to the misinterpretation that would allow someone to suggest that all because the Scripture teaches that something is a crime that does not therefore mean that it is a crime for today. Rev. DeYoung’s statement is open to the accusation that he is saying that Scripture alone is not sufficient to define crime as crime.

2.) By what standard will Rev. DeYoung and the rest of us determine the Common good if not by God’s standard as found in the Bible? John Stuart Mill, would argue that the Common good is arrived at by pragmatism but of course Christians are not pragmatists.

3.) Rev. DeYoung invokes Human Right but Humans have no rights. Humans have only duties. Only God has rights. The whole notion of “Human Rights” as they have been sold since the Enlightenment is a complete creation by Humanist categories. I would encourage Rev. DeYoung to read “What’s wrong with human rights,” by T. Robert Ingram. All ministers need to think twice about willy nilly invoking this human rights language. It may be possible for Christians to use “Human Rights” language but the usage of it by Christians would be something completely different then what we find in a Biblical Worldview.

4.) If Nature is fallen, why should we look to Natural Law? Besides, presuppositionalism has completely destroyed the whole Natural Law position. Natural law posits a reading of reality by way of neutrality. There is not such thing as neutrality.

5.) How do we know what the nature and scope of the State should be without consulting God’s Word?

All of these other considerations invoked by Rev. DeYoung are non-sequiturs.

6.) “My justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.” Rev. DeYoung’s justification goes deeper then the reality of relying on God’s word for what is ethically wrong?

That is a stupendous and curious statement.

The Contemporary Western Church’s Handling of “God’s Love.”

“Verses like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life,” give abundant proof that the redemption which the Jews thought to monopolize is universal as to space. God so loved the world, not a little portion of it, but the world as a whole, that He gave His only begotten Son for its redemption. And not only the extensity, but the intensity of God’s love is made plain by the little adverb “so,” — God so loved the world, in spite of its wickedness, that He gave His only begotten Son to die for it. But where is the oft-boasted proof of its universality as to individuals?

This verse (John 3:16) is sometimes pressed to such an extreme that God is represented as too loving to punish anybody, and so full of mercy that He will not deal with men according to any rigid standard of justice regardless of their deserts. The attentive reader, by comparing this verse with other Scripture, will see that some restriction is to be placed on the word “world.” One writer has asked, “Did God love Pharaoh? (Romans 9:17). Did He love the Amalekites? (Exodus 17:14). Did He love the Canaanites, whom He commanded to be exterminated without mercy? (Deuteronomy 20:16). Did He love the Ammonites and Moabites whom He commanded not to be received into the congregation forever? (Deuteronomy 23:3). Does He love the workers of iniquity? (Psalm 5:5). Does He love the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, which He endures with much long-suffering? (Romans 9:22). Did He love Esau? (Romans 9:13).”

~ Loraine Boettner

The Great Heresy of the church in the West today is the heresy of the “Love” of God. Countless times, when the character of God is presented people will say, “My God would never be that way,” or, “My God would never do that.” But regardless of who the god of such people is, the God of the Bible is a God who is just and who is angry with the wicked every day and who hates workers of iniquity. The fear of God is absent from people precisely because there is nothing in God, as He is typically represented, over which anyone should have any fear. Why should a god who’s love is the love of a whore be a god whom men should be in awe of? Why should a god who’s love is all sentimental pious gush be a God whom men should honor?

It is the current doctrine of the “Love of God,” that is destroying the Christian faith. Because of this salacious “love of God” doctrine I have read articles recently that speak about the necessity of the Church to rethink accepting Transvestites and Transgender people into the Church as members. Through the invocation of this “love of God” doctrine I’ve read articles that apologize because the early Church adopted a creed that found God damning people for not believing in Him as He reveals Himself in Scripture.

The chanting of John 3:16 and similar type texts, as if they are some kind of Hindu mantras that prove that God is love the way a whore is love has destroyed the Church in the West.

Garden, Tabernacle & Temple … Small Scale Models Of God’s Cosmic Sanctuary

Psalm 78:69 says something amazing about Israel’s Temple: God “built the sanctuary like the heights, [He built the sanctuary] like the earth which he has founded forever.” this tells us that in some way God modeled the Temple to be a little replica of the entire heaven and earth. Yet, in Is. 66:1 God says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for me?” God never intended that Israel’s little localized temple last forever, since, like the Eden temple, Israel’s temple was a small model of something much bigger: God and His universal presence, which could never eternally be contained by any localized earthly structure.

Israel’s tabernacle and temple were a miniature model of God’s huge cosmic temple that was to dominate the heaven and earth at the end of time. That is, the temple was a symbolic model pointing not merely to the present cosmos but also to the new heaven and earth that would be perfectly filled with God’s presence. That it was a miniature symbolic model of the coming Temple that would fill heavens and earth is evident from the following figurative features of the three sections of the temple: the holy of holies, the holy place, and the outer courtyard.

G. K. Beale

Christianity is Worth Fighting For … Rushdoony

Chrysostom, in dealing also with the conflict w/ Caesar warned his people in his sermon “Concerning the Statutes” Homily III 19

“This certainly I foretell and testify, that although this cloud should pass away, and we yet remain in the same condition of listlessness, we shall again have to suffer much heavier evils than those we are not dreading; for I do not so much fear the wrath of the Emperor, as your own listlessness.”

“Here Chrysostom put his finger on the heart of the matter: the threat was less the Emperor and more a listless and indifferent church. The same problem confronts us today. The greater majority of church members do not feel that Christianity is worth fighting for, let alone dying for. They only want the freedom to be irrelevant, and to emit pious gush as a substitute for faithfulness and obedience. In soap opera religion, life is w/o dominion; instead, it is a forever-abounding mess, met with a sensitive and bleeding heart. Soap opera religion is the faith of the castrated, of the impotent, and the irrelevant. The devotees of soap opera religion are full of impotent self pity and rage over the human predicament, but are devoid of any constructive action; only destruction and negation become them.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Roots of Reconstruction — pg 27

Chesterton On Equality

(The Englishman) “may realize that (American) equality is not some tale about all men being equally tall or equally tricky; which we not only cannot believe but cannot believe in anybody believing. It is an absolute of morals by which all men have a value invariable and indestructible and a dignity as intangible as death.”

G. K. Chesterton
What I Saw In America

If Chesterton had lived to see what I’m seeing he would have to believe in men believing that all men are equally tall and equally tricky and equally intelligent and equally creative. The lie of egalitarianism is that all men and all peoples are equal in talent, skill and ability. It is the lie that all men, regardless of nurture, nature, and belief are the same. This lie leads to the elimination of all God given and God honoring distinctions.

The American belief in equality was never intended to be equivalent to this lie. For Pete’s sake the Declaration of Independence refers to Indians as “savages,” clearly something that would not have been said by those who were intending equality to mean a bland sameness. The American belief in equality is just what Chesterton noted combined with the belief that all men bore the imago Dei.

The equality of 21st century America is the equality of the French Revolution, the equality of the gulag, the equality of the sex change. It is the pursuit of the leveling all distinction, ability, and accomplishment. It is the pursuit of equality of both opportunity and outcome – a notion that is absurd even on its surface. If the West should ever go from flirting with this modern concept of egalitarianism to a full conjugal embrace of such a fantasy the result will be the equality of the damned.