Category: R2K Virus (Radical Two Kingdom Theology)

Debunking Radical Two Kingdoms Theology

Bertrand Russell on Education … McAtee on R2K in Light of Russell Quotes

Remember, as you read these Bertrand Russell quotes, that R2K insists that it is of no concern from a Christian point of view should parents, who confess Christ as individuals, (I don’t say “Christian Parents” because I don’t think R2K believes that Parents can be Christian) place their children in Government schools. After all, education belongs to the common realm and so, can not be Christian.

“Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. . . . It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .”

Bertrand Russell
Impact of Science on Society, 1953

“Education in a scientific society may, I think, be best conceived after the analogy of the education provided by the Jesuits. The Jesuits provided one sort of education for the boys who were to become ordinary men of the world, and another for those who were to become members of the Society of Jesus. In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play.”

Bertrand Russell
part 3, XIV, Education in a Scientific Society p.251

“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished … The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Fichte was the head of philosophy & psychology
Influenced Hegel and others
Russell is quoting from a Fichte Lecture, Prussian University in Berlin, 1810

Review Of Rushdoony’s “The American Indian” — Medicine Men

“True medicine men, it was said, had given way to the white man’s doctor because he knew more than the Indian practitioner…. [The older Indian men] had no loyalty to the old ways per se. The white man’s gun was far superior to the bow and arrow. Why not his medicine also?”

R. J. Rushdoony
The American Indian

In this brief chapter RJR gives a few anecdotes about his experience with Indian Medicine men as well as what he learned from Indian elders.

“From their (older Indian men) perspective, there were no medicine men on the reservation — only fakers.”

However, according to Rush’s account there were Indians who were what we would call Natural-paths and homeopaths. Rush mentions one particular gentleman who could identify every plant in the area as well as the medicinal purposes that those plants might have had. This reminds us that allopathic medicine does not have all the answers that it pretends to have. Indeed, there are times I wonder if allopathic medicine shouldn’t be viewed as alternative medicine in favor of a more homeopathic path.

Still, despite this natural-pathic skill RJR reports that the Indian,

“liked modern conveniences and advances, including modern medicine.”

Rush reports this because the Federal Government, during the New Deal, sought to re-Indianize the Indians and as such encouraged the Indians to go back to their ancient ways. Rush writes,

“They [the Indian] had no loyalty to the old ways per se…. they did not identify their Indian-ness in terms of artifacts, and it annoyed them when others did…. They saw nothing exclusive about the benefits of the white man’s civilization …. In brief, these old men liked modern conveniences and advances, including modern medicine…. they recognized and appreciated the advantages of modern medical practice, of nurses and hospitals.”

Rush does not again the failure of the State in terms of medicine,

“They [the Indians] knew that the agency doctors were often inferior to the doctors outside of the reservation….”

The immediately above quote is important because it reminds us again that whenever the State involves itself so that people are required and forced to go to them for any service the consequence is a lowering standard of quality of whatever service the State has seized. The Indians that RJR came in contact with in his Reservation ministry were forced into a governmental health care system and as such the Doctors that they had to deal with were inferior to Doctors operating in the supply and demand market. This is an observation pregnant with meaning as the citizenry today in our country are inching towards the kind of Socialized medicine the Indians had forced upon them. Our quality of medical care will be inferior just as the Reservation’s medical care was of lower quality.

Rushdoony returns to the medicine man issue by noting that what passed as the medicine men, in his observation, were, for the most part, dabblers in peyote.

“What then of the so-called medicine men practicing at that time? Most were peyote leaders. Peyote was administered as a holy, healing medicine. It tended to paralyze the digestive tract, or at least deaden it to pain, I was told. The patient felts no pain and assumed that he was being healed.”

Rush notes that such patients of the peyote practitioners would often finally fail and at the last second would give up on the medicine man and go to the hospital, despite the warnings of the medicine man against the hospital. Often when such people finally went to the hospital they quickly died because of the previous neglect. Upon their death, the peyote medicine men would then claim that the death was the result of giving up on the medicine man and going to the hospital.

RJR ends this chapter by admitting that there were a few other types of medicine men who were not peyote playboys. Rushdoony suggests that these “healers” were in fact, demonically enabled.

“There was another kind of practitioner. How deep his roots were in Indian history, I do not know…. These medicine men, if they could be called such … I would call occultist. They had strange powers I cannot explain. One of them … could pick up a rattlesnake, chant to it, hang it around his neck and not be bitten…. [Medicine] men such as A.C. were Indian in a fanatical way: they sought to blot out the world of the white man.”

RJR notes that as Christianity waned after WWII occultism increased. He notes that only the Gospel of Jesus Christ can counter such occultist practices and muses that,

“When men turn their backs on Christian civilization, see only evil in it, and try to abstract Biblical faith and morals from themselves and the world, are they not courting the demonic.”

This is an important word for our church and culture today. In many many places in the Church today churchmen are turning their back on Christian civilization, and indeed see only evil in the idea of Christian civilization. Indeed we are everywhere seeing the attempt to abstract Biblical faith and moral from silly conceptual paradigms like Natural law. One can only wonder if such churchmen are courting the demonic by turning their backs on Christian civilization.

Van Drunen on “Living In God’s Two Kingdoms.” McAtee on VanDrunen

[T]hough we are not little Adams we still have many cultural responsibilities here and now. God does not call Christians to take up the original cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28 per se, but calls them to obey the cultural mandate as given in modified form to Noah in Genesis 9. Through the Noahic covenant God formally established the common kingdom and commissioned all people — believers and unbelievers alike — to be fruitful and multiply and to exercise dominion on earth. The goal of this commission is not to provide a way to earn or to attain the new creation but to foster the temporary preservation of life and social order until the end of the present world.

David VanDrunen
Living in God’s Two Kingdoms, pg. 164-65; italics original.

A few observations from this quote,

1.) What DVD and other R2K acolytes are advocating here is the codifying of a particularly virulent strain of amillennialism as the definition of Reformed orthodoxy. If R2K is allowed its head then all postmillennial strains and many strains of amillennialism will be read out of the canon of Reformed orthodoxy. We observe this as true regarding postmillennialism because the assumption contained in the DVD quote is that any eschatology that promotes the idea of Christianity going from triumph unto triumph, as exhibited in every area of life, so that cultures are conformed to Christ, just as individuals are, is a eschatology that is out of bounds for R2K orthodoxy. If God has, in the words of DVD, “formally established the common Kingdom,” then any and every theology that understands that the common Kingdom was not formally established as the common Kingdom is by definition a theology that has woven sin into its essence and is a theology that is working against God’s intent.

We observe this as true regarding variant strains of amillennialism contrary to militant R2K amillennialism because of the insistence of many strains of amillennialism that cultural advance is to be made in terms of Christianizing the Nations.

Here is one such sentiment from amillennialist Geerhardus Vos,

“The thought of the kingdom of God implies the subjection of the entire range of human life in all its forms and spheres to the ends of religion. The kingdom reminds us of the absoluteness, the pervasiveness, the unrestricted dominion, which of right belong to all true religion. It proclaims that religion, and religion alone, can act as the supreme unifying, centralizing factor in the life of man, as that which binds all together and perfects all by leading it to its final goal in the service of God.” (page 194)

Geerhardus Vos
The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church

Read the DVD quote and the Vos quote back to back. Notice the distance between these two quotes. If DVD and R2K has its way there will not be room in the Reformed Church for amillennialists like Dr. Geerhardus Vos.

2.) R2K advocates like to say that they do not believe in Christian culture. This is, at best, a deceptive move on their part, even if unintentional. R2K advocates do believe in Christian culture. R2K believes that Christian culture is the absence of Christian culture. Any position on culture that advocates that the common square should be explicitly Christian is, per R2K, a non Christian position. According to DVD and R2K if culture is to be Christian it must remain non Christian.

3.) DVD’s reading of the Nohaic covenant is strained, at best, and twisted at worse. Keep in mind that,

a.) Noah was chosen as a new Adam, because “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Does Noah sound, in that phraseology, to be a representative of all mankind or a representative of God’s elect?

b.) Noah offers sacrifice upon departing the Ark. Are we to understand that Noah is offering sacrifice to God as a representative, not of the Redeemed, but as a representative of all mankind?

c.) DVD misreads the whole context of the Nohaic event. God floods the earth because of his dissatisfaction with mankind and raises up Noah to be another Adam. God saves this second Adam through judgment and establishes him in a cleansed garden Mountain sanctuary in order to be God’s representative. As God’s subsequent representative Adam placed in a new post flood Eden, God repeats the same great commission given the first Adam before his own fall (Genesis 1:26-28). This great commission first given to Adam, and then to Noah is also given repeatedly to subsequent covenant heads throughout the book of Genesis thus connecting the story-line of God’s redemptive activity.

A small Whitman’s sampler of Genesis texts wherein the Adamic cultural Mandate (Gen. 1:26-28) becomes part and parcel of the Redemptive History as given to subsequent covenant contexts. Notice the repeated themes in the following texts of,

(1) God Blessed them
(2) Be fruitful and multiply
(3) fill the earth
(4) subdue the earth
(5) rule over … the earth

And take especial note that the Nohaic covenant, contra DVD, shares the language of the cultural Mandate that we find in subsequent Redemptive history unique unto God’s people, thus proving that the Noahic covenant was not a covenant that is unrelated to God’s Redemptive covenantal activity.

Genesis 1:26-28
English Standard Version (ESV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 9:1, 7
English Standard Version (ESV)
9 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth… 7 And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”

Genesis 12:2-3
English Standard Version (ESV)
2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Genesis 17:2, 6, 8
English Standard Version (ESV)
2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly….6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you…. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

Genesis 22:17-18
English Standard Version (ESV)
17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, 18 and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Genesis 26:3-4
English Standard Version (ESV)
3 Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. 4 I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,

Genesis 26:24
English Standard Version (ESV)
24 And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

Genesis 28:3-4
English Standard Version (ESV)
3 God Almighty[a] bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. 4 May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham!”

Genesis 28:13-14
English Standard Version (ESV)
13 And behold, the Lord stood above it[a] and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. 14 Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Genesis 35:11-12
English Standard Version (ESV)
11 And God said to him, “I am God Almighty:[a] be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.[b] 12 The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.”

This cultural Mandate, first found in Gen. 1:26-28, and reiterated in Gen. 9:1, 7, to Noah, is a theme that winds its way throughout Redemptive history. For a Doctor of the Church to try to advance the idea that the Noahic covenant is firm ground to introduce the idea that God desires the hyphenated life is at best a contrived reading of the text and strains credulity to the breaking point. If, with the Noahic covenant, God established the common Kingdom, then that common Kingdom was established as well in the Abrahamic covenant as it too includes the themes of,

(1) God Blessed them
(2) Be fruitful and multiply
(3) fill the earth
(4) subdue the earth
(5) rule over … the earth

4.) Contra DVD, no Reformed eschatology teaches that we earn or attain the Kingdom as if the Kingdom has not already been freely given.

D. G. (Dark Gnostic) Hart Continues With Impotent Display

Over at oddlife.org Dark Gnostic Hart continues with his impotent display. In his most recent harangue he reveals his impotence by his inability to read Iron Ink. It is funny that some people keep insisting that I don’t register my disagreements with Christianity that is cloaked as cultural Marxism (whether that emanates from the CRC or from any number of other denominations) when there are repeated essays on Iron Ink disassembling expressions of Christianity that are in reality Cultural Marxism thinly disguised. Dark Hart also whines that I don’t take on cultural Marxism insisting that I spend too much time picking on poor R2K. The problem here is that R2K and Cultural Marxism work hand in glove to advance the Cultural Marxist agenda. Cultural Marxism pushes the agenda and R2K insists that the Church is not called to resist the Cultural Marxist agenda. It’s a very commodious relationship that R2K and Cultural Marxist “Christianity” has. Yes, they are distinct, but they together work to remove all competition from the field. As such to attack either R2K or Cultural Marxism is to attack each.

In good Dark Gnostic Hart style, Dark insists that I haven’t advanced the discussion. But at this point me thinketh the lady doth protest too much. Of course the argument has been advanced. It has been advanced and so far all Dark has done is to whine about it not being advanced and about how unfair I am in the opponents with whom I deal. Hardly a ringing apologetic from his end of the conversation.

It should be made clear that I have no problem with the Spirituality of the Church. What I have a problem with is the Gnosticizing of the Church. Dark can only make his complaint about me not being nice to the Spirituality of the Church in the context of making Spirituality to be a synonym with Gnosticizing. Dark’s most recent diatribe is a routine Marxist technique, right out of their playbook. “If losing argument, impugn your enemy, distort the facts, and rage against alleged inconsistencies. Do all that can be done to steer conversation away from the facts at hand.”

In keeping with that old “Red” approach Dark Gnostic Hart has,

1.) Enlisted the “Rabbi” and “Butch” impugning
2.) Distorted the facts by equating “Spirituality of the Church” with Gnosticising of the Church
3.) Raged against the alleged inconsistency that I pick on R2K but do not pick on Cultural Marxism in the CRC and elsewhere (My blog entries prove him overwhelming in error here.)
4.) Steered the conversation away from the few salient facts offered against his justification of Christians denying Christ.

As it pertains to my ordination. I asked the questions put to me. That is generally the way that ordinations work. The CRC knows who I am. They know what I believe (the Three Forms Of Unity) and they know what my convictions are. Contrary to Dark’s attempt to misdirect the issue at hand all of this is very public.

Postscript

Dark throws out the old Chestnut about “My Kingdom is not of this world” in the comment section. I have said this ad-nausea but I will “say” it again here.

B. F. Wescott speaking of John 18:36 could comment,

“Yet He did claim a sovereignty, a sovereignty of which the spring and the source was not of earth but of heaven. My Kingdom is not of this world (means it) does not derive its origin or its support from earthly sources.”

Bahnsen echoing Wescott’s work wrote,

“‘My kingdom is not of [ek: out from] this world,’” is a statement about the source — not the nature — of His reign, as the epexegetical ending of the verse makes obvious: ‘My kingdom is not from here [enteuthen].’ The teaching is not that Christ’s kingdom is wholly otherworldly, but rather that it originates with God Himself (not any power or authority found in creation.”

Dr. Greg Bahnsen
God & Politics — pg. 27

The Gospel According To John — pg. 260

John 18:36 along with Matthew 22:15-22 are two of the passages that are often put forth as defeaters for the comprehensive sovereignty of the Lord Jesus over this world. Bahnsen clearly shows here, quite in agreement with the Greek scholar B. F. Westcott, that God’s Kingdom, as it manifests itself in this world, is energized by a source outside this world. This is important to emphasize because many people read John 18:36 as proof that the Kingdom of Jesus does not and should not express itself in this world. Often this verse is appealed to in order to prove that God’s Kingdom is only “spiritual” and as such Christians shouldn’t be concerned about what are perceived as “non-spiritual” realms. Support for such thinking, if there is any, must come from passages other than John 18:36.

What we get from some contemporary Calvinists, is the quote of Christ telling Pilate that ‘His Kingdom is not of this World,’ as if that is to end all conversation on the Lordship of Christ over all cultural endeavors. What is forgotten is the way that John often uses the word ‘World.’ John often uses the word ‘World’ with a sinister significance to communicate a disordered reality in grip of the Devil set in opposition to God. If that is the way that the word ‘world’ is being used in John 18:36 then we can understand why Jesus would say that His Kingdom ‘was not of this world.’ The Kingdom of Jesus will topple the Kingdoms of this disordered world changing them to be the Kingdoms of His ordered world, but it won’t be done by the disordered methodology of this World and so Jesus can say, “My Kingdom is not of this World.” Hopefully, we can see that such a statement doesn’t mean that Christ’s Kingdom has no effect in this world or that Christ’s Kingdom can’t overcome the world.

John 18:36 is often appealed to in order to prove that the Kingdom of God is a private individual spiritual personal reality that does not impinge on public square practice(s) of peoples or nations corporately considered. Those who appeal to John 18:36 in this way are prone thus to insist that God’s Word doesn’t speak to the public square practice(s) of peoples or nations since such an appeal (according to this thinking) would be an attempt to wrongly make God’s Kingdom of this world.

The problem with this though is it that it is a misreading of the passage. When Jesus say’s “My Kingdom is not of this world,” his use of the word “world” here is not spatial. Jesus is not saying that His Kingdom does not impact planet earth. What Jesus is saying is that His Kingdom does not find its source of authority from the world as it lies in Adam.

Jesus brings a Kingdom to this world that is in antithetical opposition to the Kingdom of Satan that presently characterizes this world in this present wicked age. The Kingdom that Jesus brings has its source of authority in His Father’s Word. As a result of Christ bringing His Kingdom w/ His advent there are two Kingdoms that are vying for supremacy on planet earth. Postmillennialism teaches that the Kingdom of the “age to come” that characterizes Christ’s present Kingdom will be victorious in this present spatial world that is characterized by “this present wicked age,” precisely because, in principle, Christ’s Kingdom is already victorious in this present spatial world.

All nations will bow to Jesus and all kings will serve him and his mustard seed kingdom will grow to become the largest plant in the garden with the nation-birds finding rest in its branches. His kingdom is the stone which crushed the kingdoms of men in Daniel 2 and which is growing to become a mountain-empire which fills the whole earth, until all His enemies are made His footstool.

Because Christ’s Kingdom is victorious on this planet His Kingdom extends beyond the personal private individual realm and so impacts the public square. Another way to say that would be precisely because Christ’s Kingdom continues to be populated by a swarming host of individuals those individuals take that Kingdom that has overcome them and in turn overcome all that they touch with the Kingdom.

Dr. Geehardus Vos was not a postmillennialist but some of the things he taught captures what I am trying to communicate regarding Christ’s Kingdom while at the same time delineating Darryl’s misconceptions. Vos wrote,

“The kingdom means the renewal of the world through the introduction of supernatural forces.” (page 192)

“The thought of the kingdom of God implies the subjection of the entire range of human life in all its forms and spheres to the ends of religion. The kingdom reminds us of the absoluteness, the pervasiveness, the unrestricted dominion, which of right belong to all true religion. It proclaims that religion, and religion alone, can act as the supreme unifying, centralizing factor in the life of man, as that which binds all together and perfects all by leading it to its final goal in the service of God.” (page 194)

Geerhardus Vos
The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church

The Teacher, The Pastor, and The Darryl

Matthew 10:32-33 — RHV — (Revised Hart Version)

“32 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, unless in the context of having to protect the State employer from a lawsuit, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. 33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, unless they are working for the State to insulate children from truth about me, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”

First the story:

In mid-December, six-year-old Isaiah Martinez brought a box of candy canes to his public elementary school. Affixed to each cane was a legend explaining the manner in which the candy symbolizes the life and death of Jesus. Isaiah’s first-grade teacher took possession of the candy and asked her supervising principal whether it would be permissible for Isaiah to distribute to his classmates. The teacher was informed that, while the candy itself might be distributed, the attached religious message could not. She is then reported to have told Isaiah that “Jesus is not allowed at school,” to have torn the legends from the candy, and to have thrown them in the trash.

Such is the account of Robert Tyler of Advocates for Faith & Freedom, who is serving as media spokesman for the Martinez family. Organizations such as Fox News and Glenn Beck’s The Blaze latched onto the story with purple prose and pointed commentary to rally the base. The Daily Caller described the teacher as having “snatched” the candy from Isaiah’s hands, “and then—right in front of his little six-year-old eyes—ripped the religious messages from each candy cane.” Fox News said “it takes a special kind of evil to confiscate a six-year-old child’s Christmas gifts.”

Turns out the teacher in question is a putative Christian and her former “pastor” explains what may have happened:

Such behavior would be entirely unbecoming of Christians even if the teacher in question were all the things she has been called. In fact, she is herself a pious and confessional Christian, though it would be impossible to discern as much from the coverage of much Christian media.

I know this because I was present at her baptism; I participated in the catechesis leading to her reception into the theologically (and, overwhelmingly, politically) conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; I preached at her wedding; my wife and I are godparents to her children, as she and her husband (who is himself on the faculty of a Christian university) are to our youngest. Needless to say, I have complete confidence that her far less dramatic version of events is much the more accurate account.

Some will say that precisely as a Christian she should have had the courage of her convictions and allowed the distribution of a Christian message in her classroom. And yet, precisely because she is a catechized Christian, perhaps she understands that in her vocation she serves under the authority of others.

Perhaps it was wise in the litigious context of America’s public schools to confer with and defer to the supervising principal. Indeed, a lawsuit arising from virtually identical circumstances is still, ten years on, bogged down in the courts. If the answers to the pertinent legal questions are not immediately obvious to the dozens of lawyers and judges involved in this previous case, one can hardly expect them to be **self-evident even to an intelligent primary school teacher. Thus, those critics who have dismissively counseled her simply to “read the Constitution” betray (in addition to a lack of charity) either an unhelpful naivety or a willful ignorance.

Now we add Dr. D. Gnostic Hart’s brief observation,

Of course, if you want to score points in some sort of publicity competition, demonizing this woman is not a bad strategy, though why Reformed Protestants also resort to such behavior (yes, I’m thinking the BeeBees and Rabbi Bret) is another question. But if you want to think through the layers of significance in such occurrences, maybe it’s better to check if as in this case the teacher belongs to a church and what her pastor thinks.

A few observations,

1.) Note that the teacher in question, the Pastor who came to her defense, and the Darryl by extension, while perfectly fine with keeping the Lord Christ out of the Government schools are perfectly fine with protecting the place of the God-State in the Government school. The Allegiance of the teacher, the Pastor, and the Darryl are all to the State as the God who can determine how far other competing gods can walk in their domain.

2.) It makes little difference what the Teacher and her Pastor thinks, or what the Darryl thinks since the Scriptures explicitly teach that we are to confess Christ before men. The Scripture does not teach that if we are working in the common realm we at that point can on longer be concerned with confessing Christ. The Scriptures do not teach, contra the Teacher, the Missouri Synod Lutheran Pastor, and the Darryl, that in the common realm one confesses Christ by not Confessing Christ.

3.) The Pastor, the Teacher, and the Darryl are all evidence of a Christianity that is no Christianity. This kind of pietism that practices a narrow other-worldly and predominantly effeminate spirituality is actually suggesting that it is the responsibility of pietistic Christians everywhere to make sure that the rest of us non effeminate Christians not confess Christ in the common realm.

4.) Why did the Pastor bother Catechizing this Teacher when she was a girl? It doesn’t take a great deal of memory work to learn that there is one realm where you are to be Christian and one realm where being Christian means not being Christian. It doesn’t take a great deal of memory work to learn that Christ is absolute Lord over the grace realm but only one of many lords in the common realm — all of whom are under the authority of the true Lord; the God-State.

5.) The Pastor, the Teacher, and the Darryl, are suggesting that it is God’s will, when under Christ hating authorities, to bow the knee to the Christ hating authorities instead of bowing the knee to Christ.

6.) Referring to the Missouri Lutheran Pastor’s argument about matters “**self-evident.” People argue that it is not self-evident that life in the womb is life. Does that mean that therefore it is difficult for Christians to see it as self-evident that life is life? All because Lawyers and Judges are so brain-dead that they can’t see the “self-evident” doesn’t mean we as Christians can’t see the “self-evident.” The Pastor is using a lame rationalization here to cover the Teacher’s sins and his own sins. The Teacher denied Christ before men and the Pastor and the Darryl are justifying her denying Christ before men and so are themselves denying Christ before men.

7.) Of course, if you want to score points in some sort of publicity competition, demonizing Pastors who believe that Jesus meant what he said in Mt. 10:32-33, then it is not a bad strategy, though why Gnostic Reformed Protestants also resort to such behavior (yes, I’m thinking Dr. Darryl Gnostic Hart here) is perfectly understandable. But if you want to think through the layers of significance in such occurrences, maybe it’s better to check if as in this case the teacher belongs to a church and whether the Church is Biblical and whether the Pastor and the Darryl supporting the Teacher are orthodox.

Look, this is serious stuff. We are seeing the Pastor and the Darryl here instruct people that it is fit and proper to deny Christ.

Matthew 10:32-33

32 Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. 33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.