Category: Quotes & Commentary

McAtee Analyzes Quote From “Conversations that Matter,” touching Soft-WOKE Churches

As long as seminaries fail to teach what the Bible assumes about nations and gender we will continue to have soft-woke pastors who think they’re just being biblical because “imago dei = egalitarianism” “every tribe, tongue, and nation = local church diversity telos” and “women can’t be in pastoral office = they can have any other leadership.”

The created order the authors of Scripture presumed is now universally forgotten in favor of blank-slate biblicalism.

We need history. We need reason. We need tradition. Not as final authorities but as tools and fences.

Conversations That Matter

1.) I’m sorry, but this not soft WOKEism. This is hard WOKEism. We have gotten so used to WOKE we ourselves are willing to call hard WOKE, “Soft WOKE.” Now, to be sure, doubtless there are even greater degrees of “WOKEness” but lets not allow ourselves to believe that the above is “Soft WOKE.” Churches and ministers that are that kind of WOKE should be abandoned with the purpose of saving your own soul.

2.) Of course Blank-slate Biblicalism is a non-thing. They really are not blank slate but are starting with WOKE presuppositions on their slate and so are finding it confirmed in Scripture. The problem is not that they are really “Blank-slate.” That is impossible. The problem is that their slate has scribbled all over it anti-Christ presuppositions.

3.) History, reason, and tradition are only as good as the theology they presuppose. They can not exist independently of theology. Our problem is not that we do not have history, reason, or tradition. Our problem is that Christian theology is not informing our history, reason, and tradition. Instead an alien theology is informing what we call “history,” “reason,” and “tradition.” History, reason, and tradition never exist independent of some a-priori theology. Therefore if history, reason, and tradition are going to help us at all we have to get our theology right, and we have to start explicitly connecting the dots between our history, reason, and tradition and our Biblical theology. If we don’t make those connections then history, reason, and tradition will not and can not serve as tools and fences.

4.) It is true that history, reason, and tradition can be tools but they are only useful tools if we see the connection between our history, reason, and tradition, and the theology that of which they are expressions.

 

Heinrich Bullinger on the Implications of the Unity of Scripture

“For the apostle Paul, speaking to the Hebrews, as concerning Christian faith, doth say: ‘These through faith did subdue kingdoms, wrought righteousness, were valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of aliens.’ Now, since our faith is all one, and the very same with theirs, it is lawful for us, as well as for them, in a rightful quarrel by war to defend our country and religion, our virgins and old men, our wives and children, our liberty and possessions. They are flatly unnatural to their country and countrymen, and do transgress this fifth commandment, whatsoever do (under the pretense of religion) forsake their country afflicted with war, not endeavoring to deliver it from barbarous soldiers and foreign nations, even by offering their lives to the push and prick of present death for the safeguard thereof.”

Heinrich Bullinger
From collection of sermons preached in Zurich entitled “The Decades”

Consider the implications of this quote from one of the Princes of the Reformation;

1.) Clearly David Van Drunen and Radical Two Kingdom theology would insist that Bullinger was being irresponsible (and probably sinful) as a minister of the Gospel to be enjoining that Christians fight to defend their homeland and religion. The clear implication here is that the country that is being fought for (defended) is a Christian country. For R2K, it is not possible to have a Christian country.

2.) Similarly, R2K would bring Bulllinger up on charges for implying that a people (nation) can be so Christian that the people of that nation are responsible to take up arms to defend it against those who would overthrow their land and their religion.

3.) Notice how Bullinger draws together country, religion, liberty, possessions and people into one net. They are distinct, to be sure, but they also are inter-related. There is no Christian country populated by Christian people without liberty and personal possessions. They  imply one another. For a Christian people (nation) to live without liberty and possessions is a giant oxymoron. A Christian nation is defined by the people therein having liberty and possessions.

4.) I am convinced that one implications of this Bullinger quote is that no Christian should be serving in the US Military since to serve in the US Military today would be to take up the cause to defend an alien religion and a people who have foresworn fealty to Jesus Christ. The current US Military is in the service of a god-state with aspirations to completely overthrow Biblical Christianity. It is in league with the New World Order.

5,) I am convinced that one implication of this Bullinger quote is that Christians should be taking up manly resistance against the current NWO State. We are now being forced  to defend, in Bullinger’s words, the enslavement of “our country and religion, our virgins and old men, our wives and children, our liberty and possessions.” If we do not rise up to resist the current NWO state we will be found to be violators of the 5th commandment, per Bullinger.

What Reformed Luminaries Are Saying Regarding What Constitutes The Essence Of Christianity

“Luther understood that the Christian life was a life of suffering. The essence of Christianity is to see one’s rights trampled and not demand them. To stand up and say I demand my rights, as a Christian, is precisely the violation of everything the gospel is about.”

High Profile Reformed Leader
Reputed to be a Pillar in the Church

I must admit that this drives me mad. I become unhinged at these kinds of statements.

1.) The Christian life is indeed characterized by suffering but the suffering arises out of Christians pressing for the crown rights of King Jesus in every area of life. Inasmuch as what we are contending for is consistent with the teaching of Scripture there is nothing evil about Christians demanding to be treated in the ways Scripture says that all men should treat one another.

2.) I am currently dealing with 3 marriages where one spouse is just being horrid to another spouse. Is the counsel I am supposed to give the spouse that is being tyrannized; “You know, Jesus loves it when you gladly accept the tyranny of your spouse. Indeed, The essence of Christianity is to see your rights trampled aby your spouse nd not demand them. You are most like Jesus when you are gladly embracing the tyranny of your spouse.”

3.) By this reasoning all the warriors of the Christian faith from Martel to Don Juan to Sobieski to Cromwell were all acting in a non Christian manner by standing up for their rights.

4.) St. Paul appealed to his rights as a Roman citizen in Acts 22-23.  Are we to believe that Paul missed the essence of Christianity?

5.) Luther himself stood up for his rights when he said “Here I stand. I can do no other.” He stood up for the rights of all Germans/Christians against Rome’s malfeasance. Indeed, the very reason Rome hated Luther, the Reformers, and the Reformation so much is that the Protestants were standing for their rights as revealed in Scripture. It was Rome who would have argued that the very essence of Christianity was to see the rights of the Reformers trampled. It was Rome who argued that the Reformers should just be quiet about their rights as taught by Scripture. It was the Reformers who wanted the right of letting the Bible speak without the Magisterium.

6.) This quote is the language of every tyrant.

7.) This kind of reasoning is the result of both Pietism and Amillennialism. No Postmillennial would ever talk like this. Amillennialism expects defeat in space and time and so they develop their theology so as to guarantee the defeat that their theology demands them to expect. Pietism on the other hand is a retreatist disposition that believes that Christians shouldn’t get involved in worldly things. Saying that Christians shouldn’t insist upon how God insists that they should be treated is consistent with both Amillennialism and Pietism.

8.) With this statement this leader condemns the Dutch resistance against Catholic Spain in the 16th-17th century. With this statement  he condemns action of the English Protestants against King Charles I. With this statement  he condemns Knox’s contretemps with Queen Mary. With this statement he condemns the American war for Independence. Per  our Reformed leader they all missed what the “gospel is all about.”

9.) This is doormat theology. The Christian is most holy when they are most abused. Certainly, Christians suffer. Certainly, Christians see their rights trampled when there is nothing they can do about it and they gladly suffer for Christ and the Kingdom when there is nothing they can do about it. However, to say that expecting that Elders, Magistrates, and Husbands, should never be resisted when they are trampling on the privilege afforded to Christians per God’s Word is just complete and utter bunkum.

And I don’t care the credentials of who says it.

The Impossibility of Tolerance

 

“There can be no tolerance in a law-system for another religion. Toleration is a device used to introduce a new law system as a prelude to a new intolerance… Every law-system must maintain its existence by hostility to every other law system and to alien religious foundations or else it commits suicide.”

R.J. Rushdoony

If you think about this quote for a moment you often realize that pluralism is a myth. Pluralism is a myth because the total tolerance that is required in pluralism does not include tolerance for those who refused to be tolerant towards tolerance as seen by insisting that the gods in a pluralistic system must bow to the one true God. At the end of the day pluralism is only tolerant for those who tolerate pluralism.

In terms of the idea of tolerance the same goes for relations between physical organisms. You can’t develop a tolerance to a parasite in your system. It’s trying to take over your whole body and kill it, while your body’s defenses spring to kill the parasite. The two are at war.

Edmund Burke In Praise of Prejudice

I Corinthians 6:2  Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! 
___________

“You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess that we are generally men of untaught feelings, that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.”

Edmund Burke
Reflections on the Revolution in France — pg. 100