Category: Quotes & Commentary

McAtee Analyzes Stephen Wolfe Using Theological Categories

Col. 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Romans 11:36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things…

“We think that all faithful thinking has to be theological. But most things, to truly understand them, require non-theological analysis. That’s not to say that they are outside God but that the topics of the theological discipline cannot adequately explain/analyze them.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

“An Orthodox Jewish friend of mine spotted it immediately in a comment he made to me soon after seeing the movie (Gibson’s ‘The Passion of Christ’) himself and dismissing the charges of antisemitism as preposterous. ‘It’s all a put on, isn’t it?’ he remarked. ‘None of the guys claiming it’s antisemitic really believes that. It’s really just a question of power. That’s all.’

It is indeed a question of power because entirely apart from the theological, historical, and aesthetic merits of the Gibson film is the question of controlling the public culture, the way of life that defines American society and establishes public standards by which behavior, discussion, and thought are regulated. You probably do not have to accept Christopher Dawson’s view that ‘a living religion always aspires to be the center round which the whole culture revolves’ to grasp that religion is invariably a powerful force in defining a culture and that it is no coincidence that the words cult and culture both derive from the Latin cultus. The religion a society accepts—publicly, regardless of what its members privately believe—is what defines its morals and its patterns of what is and is not legitimate.

The angry controversy about (the movie) ‘The Passion’ is about which cultus will define American culture, and the conflict over the movie is a struggle for cultural power, for what Antonio Gramsci called  ‘cultural hegemony.’ Rabbi Jacob Neusner has remarked that Auschwitz has replaced Sinai in the religious sensibilities of many modern secularized Jews, and the bitter and hysterical war against Mel Gibson represents a further attempted displacement—that Auschwitz replace Calvary, that Christianity itself as Americans understand and accept it be defined and regulated by contemporary Jewish standards and those cultural hegemons who enforce them.”

Samuel T. Francis

I run these these three quotes, from Scripture, Wolfe, and Francis, together in order to demonstrate how mind bogglingly jejune Wolfe is to insist. “that to understand most things requires non-theological analysis”, by providing a Samuel Francis quote regarding a film. Francis’ quote, using theological analysis gets to the center of the meaning of Mel Gibson’s film as well as why it was so vehemently resisted.

Secondly, contra Wolfe and R2K, with their agreement on the Natural Law model of the world, there is no understanding of any reality apart from the usage of theological analysis and categories. I promise you any analysis that Wolfe does on anything is riven with theological assumptions and a-prioris. The theological assumption that is incipient in Wolfe’s quote above is that God is not needed in order to understand many aspects of reality. Wolfe is presuming that man can understand many aspects of reality in the context of completely discountenancing the God of the Bible. Autonomous man, can, starting only from his own reality, and as the measure of whatever he is analyzing, come to the truth of whatever he is analyzing.  You cannot understand the depth of the depravity of Wolfe’s quote without using theological categories to analyze his and its depravity.

Thirdly, what is odd about Wolfe’s quote when compared with the Francis quote is that Francis, who was not a Christian at the time he wrote this piece from which the quote comes, was not a Christian while Wolfe professes Christ. Here we have a case where the children of darkness are wiser than the children of the light.

I do accept Dawson’s view on religion and it is only Wolfe’s religion that could force him to not accept Dawson’s view on religion that religion/theology is the center around which all culture orbits. If we don’t do analysis on anything via theological categories then all that is left is doing analysis via humanistic categories, which, ironically enough, ends up being its own theological analysis.

Wolfe went on to describe anybody who disagrees with his quote above as doing the worst of worldview thinking. Keep in mind that Natural Law theory is inimically hostile to worldview thinking. It is only “natural” that a Natural law aficionado like Wolfe would say such a thing.

Dawson is correct. Religion/theology is the center around which all revolves and since that is the center than all is an expression of the religion/theology around which it revolves.

All the denials and vituperations of the Stephen Wolfes and the R. Scott Clarks of the world, who do not agree that everything must be analyzed using theological categories, no matter what else they might disagree on, will not change that.

Van Til & McAtee on Linguistic Deception

“Modernists will usually betray pretty clearly that they use Christian terminology before a pagan background . . . Modernism is the use of Christian terms for the purpose of conveying pagan thought . . . All the words that we daily use and give a Christian meaning must now receive a pagan meaning

Cornelius Van Til
“What Do You Mean?” The Banner, Vol. 67

This is called linguistic deception and we are seeing it all the time now. Linguistic deception treats words like eggs which can be cracked open and emptied of their content and then filled with new content. What these people do is they empty words used by Christians that have traditional meanings and then fill them with other meaning.

We see this w/ R2K for example. All R2K fanboys will affirm that Jesus is Lord, but eventually one learns that the word “Lord” for R2K fanboys means “Lord,” except for where Jesus is only “kind of Lord in a spiritual sense.”

We see this w/ Federal Vision types. They assert “Justification by faith alone,” and then they teach that there are two justifications, initial and final, and not all who are initially justified are finally justified. What’s the difference between the those who are initially justified and also finally justified and those who are who initially justified but not also finally justified? Well, what else can the difference be but the contributory dynamic of our works to that final justification?

We see this in Gary DeMar’s full Preterism. They recite the Apostles Creed but when they get to the part about Jesus returning again for the quick and the dead, suddenly that is reinterpreted to mean “returning for the persons of the quick and the dead but not their corporeal and now glorified bodies.”

Machen complained about this linguistic deception in his “Christianity and Liberalism,” continuously. He complained that Modernists (Liberals) where cracking open the words, emptying out the meaning, and then filling the words with new meaning, while still insisting that they were “Christian,” when in point of fact they were liars, just as the R2K chaps, the FV chaps and the Full Preterist chaps are liars when they do the very same thing.

OK… let me soften that a wee bit. At least some of them are epistemologically self conscious about their lying while the rest who are doing the same may not be epistemologically self conscious about what they are doing but instead are merely useful idiots.

Bahnsen on Ethics Arrived At Apart from God

With painful irony we note the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Man has learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God. . . . [God] is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along very well without him.” The pathos of these words is that they were penned in Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, penned after Hitler’s Gestapo, learning to get along very well without God, had imprisoned Bonhoeffer, thereby preventing the completion of his book on Ethics and resulting in his hanging in 1945. When the questions of ethics are answered without recourse to God, the following views of the state become inevitable:

The State incarnates the Divine Idea upon earth (Hegel).

The State is the supreme power, ultimate and beyond repeal, absolutely independent (Fichte).

Everything for the State; nothing outside the State; nothing

against the State (Mussolini).

The State dominates the nation because it alone represents it (Hitler).

The State embraces everything, and nothing has value outside the State. The State creates right (Franklin Delano Roosevelt).

Thus Bonhoeffer’s assertion represented the very outlook which condoned his immoral execution. The source of moral authority and law within a society will either be theistic or political; when the former is repudiated, the latter allows of no logical barrier from tyranny.

Greg Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics

Interacting with Rev. Isker’s “Boniface Option”

“The modern family w/ its labor capacity auctioned off to the highest bidder, has more in common w/ ancient slavery than it does the household. You can be married. You can even have children. But you are owned by a master. Sure, your master treats you well, and your wife’s master treats her well. You receive lavish amenities. You have a nice McMansion in a safe cul-de-sac away from crime. You might even get to own a BMW or a brand new F-150. You get to enjoy plentiful food and drink. You get to wear stylish clothing. Your respective masters give you free time every so often to take your children (who are raised by strangers while you serve your masters) to places like Disney World. You might be able to choose to leave one master for another. But you will always have a master.

We don’t think of this existence as slavish because we equate slavery with utter destitution and barbaric, torturous abuse. But in the ancient world, that was not universally the case. Some slaves were indeed worked to death in the mines. Others lived decent, full lives tending to fields and herds. And others lived comfortable lives in the households of nobles. But one thing was certain — slaves did not have their own households. We think that modern life is not the life of the slave because of comparative luxury, but the structure of modern life is almost same. In fact ancient slaves w/ wives and children had something much closer to a true household than modern men today, especially the intentionally childfree.”

Rev. Andrew Isker
Boniface Option — p. 94-95

This is quite excellent and it doesn’t even include the thought that slavery is a guaranteed reality given the debt that most moderns have embraced. Scripture teaches that the debtor is the slave to the creditor and with the incredible credit card debt that Americans are weighed down with it is just as simple fact that we are a slave people.

However, we love it so. We love being slaves and the we here applies just as much to “Christians” as to non Christians.

The impact of all this slavery is we are a people who are afraid to speak the truth. Slaves dare not step up to the microphone and say anything against those who hold the keys to his chains. For this reason the one place where we might well expect the truth to be spoken instead has gone silent. The clergy in America belong to the slave class and so they go out of their way to kiss their master’s tush. As such the truth that Slavemerica needs to hear goes unspoken.

In point of fact with the rise of the heretical R2K the clergy are now trained to be able to wear their chains comfortably while at the same time extolling the ability to spend their whole careers in pulpits quite without telling God’s people that they can and should be free of their chains as well.

It is all quite disgusting and discouraging.

“You must stop thinking of yourself as a mere individual but rather as a member of a hierarchy with duties and responsibilities to his people. The world that existed before Trashworld, the world Christendom existed within, had a word for men like this; Nobles.”

Rev. Andrew Isker
Boniface Option — p. 104

All this friction that exists between Christian Boomers and Christian Zers ought not to be. If Christianity is premised upon the truth of “harmony of interests” than each generation should be seeking the best of the other. The Boomers as the older and wiser should be seeking to come along side and help the successive generations all they can. The younger generations, when they find wisdom among the Boomers should treat them with respect and honor. (This would mean losing the “OK Boomer sobriquet).
We need to understand we are the body of Christ with every part seeking to help every other part.

We will rise or fall together.

“You must teach your children to love the things you love and to hate the things you hate. You must overcome your aversion to hate. If you cannot bring yourself to hate a malignant world built upon child sacrifice and crowned with genital mutilation, you are not going to make it, nor will your children. Hatred of such things is something you MUST pass down to your children, and your must raise them among others who understand the same.”

Rev. Andrew Isker
Boniface Option — pg. 113

Look, the problem now for generations has been that our loves and hates have not been passionate enough as combined with the reality that we have not taught our children why we love and hate as we do. Instead we have emphasized the necessity to “be nice” and the consequence to this has been the reality that 2-3 generations of God’s covenant seed have walked away from Biblical Christianity. We have not taught our children how to think. We have not taught them what we believe and why we believe it and what we don’t believe and why we don’t believe it and the result is that we have lost too many of our children because they have decided that their loves and their hates will be other than ours. This is our fault because we didn’t detail out for them a particular world and life view. We gave them the gruel of “love Jesus,” without telling them precisely who Jesus is that they were supposed to love. Many generations didn’t train their children this way because they themselves refused to do the hard work of becoming epistemologically self-conscious. And that in turn is the fault of the Church. The clergy failed to sound the tocsin. The clergy failed to raise the cry of the character and nature of God, of the beauty of our undoubted catholic Christian faith, of the idea of honoring the fearful and majestic Kingship of our Liege Lord Christ.

We have lost our children because we didn’t instruct them to share our passions. We have contributed to Trashworld because we didn’t train up warriors and shield-maidens for the Kingdom of God.

And now God’s house is left largely bare. The warrior spirit has melted away. The willingness of our Christian men to fight the good fight has evaporated and the willingness of our women folk to tell their men to “come home with your shield or upon your shield” is absent.

Where are the warriors? Where are they who will teach their children to be warriors for the Kingdom? Where are men and women who will love God enough to manfully hate the enemies of God. Where are the men and women who will give up all to train up a generation who themselves have only one desire and that is the desire to slay the dragon?

Oh God raise up such a generation once again please and do it that thy name may once again be honored.

Sundry Observations on the French Revolution

I.)”By the time I got through with my research and I was ready to write this book I felt anyone who understands the French Revolution will understand all left-wing revolutions. And anyone who doesn’t understand the French Revolution will… is going to be doomed to be victimized by a left-wing revolution.”

 

Otto Scott

Lecture — French Revolution and Its Influences

Pocket College

This quote teaches us that Clergy who are unfamiliar with the French Revolution should get out of the pulpit until they familiarize themselves with the French Revolution because what is happening in the West is that Christianity is being reinterpreted through the grid of the French Revolution and the ignorant Clergy is complicit because they don’t know better, and in not knowing better they don’t understand the urgency of the times to bring God’s Word to bear. God’s Word teaches that revolution begins in the desire to revolt against God’s authority. Because of this Scripture is anti-Revolutionary.

II.) Robespierre was the head of the “Committee of Public Safety.” This is a perfect example of Statist euphemisms. “The Committee of Public Safety?”

LOL — This Committee of Public safety was that Statist agency that was responsible for the flow of public blood in the streets compliments of Madame La Guillotine.

This is the way humanist Government always works. Whatever title they put on something you can be damn sure that something will be doing just the exact opposite of whatever title they stick on it.

Obama Healthcare anyone?

III.) “What Marx was to the Russian Revolution of 1917, Rousseau was to the French Revolution of the 1790’s. Like Marx, he was a parasite who never worked an honest day in his life. He was an expert at leeching off his aristocratic buddies, and wrote a series of treatises which blamed the evils of property and civilisation for the corruption of man. He wrote these while living in the lap of luxury with the aristocratic women he seduced.”

Moses Apostaticus

 

IV.) The cry of the French Revolution was Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

It was all a lie.

As long as Equality is pursued neither Liberty nor Fraternity is possible. Equality negates Liberty because Liberty creates unequal stations, accentuates different abilities, and creates classes as some men use Liberty to excel while other men use Liberty to stagnate. Equality negates Fraternity because Equality breeds envy against those who have used Liberty to excel and envy always destroys Fraternity.

You can have Equality or you can have Liberty and Fraternity but you can not have all three together and the choosing of equality is the choosing of a mechanism, usually the state, as the means my which equality will be monitored and forced.