Category: Theology

The Well-Intentioned Offer vs. God Commands All Men Everywhere to Repent

Max writes,

The gospel offer is not grounded in Christ dying for each person individually. Scripture grounds the offer in God’s command and God’s promise.

God commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). And He promises that whoever comes to Christ will be saved (John 6:37). That universal command and universal promise is the universal offer.

Bret responds,

Clearly Max you don’t understand the difference between a command and an offer. That God commands all men everywhere to repent is not the same as saying “God offers all men everywhere salvation.” The former is a true statement. The latter is not a true statement. God does NOT offer the reprobate salvation.

Max writes,

The offer is not: “Believe and then Christ will die for you.”
And it’s not: “Christ died for you in particular, therefore believe.”

Bret responds,

That’s correct, but only because the Gospel does not come with any offer at all.

Max writes,

The offer is: “Come to Christ, and you will find a real, finished, all‑sufficient atonement that actually saves everyone who comes.”

Bret responds,

That is not an offer. An offer says, “Christ offers to you salvation if you will have it.” What you have above Max is a tautology. Of course, people who come to Christ find a real, finished, all‑sufficient atonement that actually saves because the only people who come to Christ come because of a real, finished, all‑sufficient atonement actually saved.

Max writes,

Christ’s death is of infinite worth — fully sufficient to save every sinner on earth. The question of for whom He intended His death is a different category from the question of to whom God commands and promises salvation. Scripture keeps those categories distinct, and I’m trying to honor that distinction.

Bret

Logic also keeps the idea of “offer” distinct from the idea of “command.” You keep saying offer and then you explain “offer” as if it means “command.”

Christ commands all men everywhere to repent but He could not possibly give a well-intentioned offer to all men everywhere to repent since that would involve Him in the contradiction that He dies only for the elect, but He offers His salvation to those who were never elect and for whom He did not die for (i.e. – The reprobate).

Max writes

So the offer isn’t an empty box. The gift is Christ Himself — a real Savior with a real atonement that actually saves all who come to Him.

Bret responds

The offer is an empty box for the reprobate because there is no way it can be well-intentioned.

You don’t actually believe that man’s coming to Christ is the trigger event that effectuates Christ’s death for them do you Max?

Maybe instead it is the case that people come to Christ because they were saved at and in the Cross? Maybe that’s the reason why they hear the command (not offer) to repent and have faith?

Christ As the Suffering Servant

37. Q. What do you confess when you say that he suffered?

A. During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.1 Thus, by his suffering, as the only atoning sacrifice,2 he has redeemed our body and soul from everlasting damnation,3 and obtained for us the grace of God, righteousness, and eternal life.4

1 Is 53; 1 Tim 2:6; 1 Pet 2:24; 3:18. 2 Rom 3:25; 1 Cor 5:7; Eph 5:2; Heb 10:14; 1 Jn 2:2; 4:10. 3 Rom 8:1-4; Gal 3:13; Col 1:13; Heb 9:12; 1 Pet 1:18, 19. 4 Jn 3:16; Rom 3:24-26; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 9:15.

It is during Lent that we find ourselves concentrating on those truths of Christianity that if they are brought up at all are brought up in a light and tertiary manner as if they are secondary issues. Huge Churches are built on the basis of not touching the issues that surround Lent. However, as we learn it is these subjects that often are at the heart of the Christian religion. We have taken up a couple of those truths the last two weeks. We looked at the subject of Repentance and the necessity, that because we are creatures, and because we are never completely free from the effects of Adam’s fall, our leaning into life should be characterized by repentance. We noted that because we always fall short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness in all that we think, do or say, our lives should be characterized as one of repentance.

Last week we considered the Lenten theme of humility. We said that if pride is the mother lode of all other sin then humility is the Round-up that kills pride. We spent some time considering the plethora of Scripture that reminds Christians over and over that God resists the proud by gives grace to the humble…. to the Scriptures that teach we are to clothe ourselves with humility. We insisted that it is only the Christian who ever pursues humility since the non-Christian, by definition, lives with self at the center of his whole existence. We insisted, that like repentance, the Christian life is one of constantly pulling the weed of self.

Most importantly, we noted that the Cross is at the center of repentance and humility. If we are to learn repentance and humility we must be students of the Cross. The Cross exposes our need for repentance reminding us of God’s righteous and holy standard by which sin is judged. If the price of sin was the Cross and if we grow in that understanding, then sorrow for our sin that issues in repentance is the hum of our lives.

Our repentance doesn’t improve our standing with God, but it reflects a growing gratitude for the Cross, and this gratitude demonstrates itself by a lifestyle of repentance and ever-growing obedience.

When we learn the Cross, we also learn humility. It is impossible to carry a proud and haughty mien when we consider the humility that Christ suffered. The Cross teaches that there Christ paid for all our pride, and the Spirit poured out because of the Cross works in God’s people to put to ever increasingly put to death pride, selfishness, and the desire to live with ourselves at the center.

This week we take up the subject of suffering. This is another motif of Lent along with Repentance and humility. This week we will take up the suffering of Christ and next week we will consider the call to our own suffering.

During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ suffered bearing the Wrath of God.

Here we find some surprised that it could be said that Christ suffered during all the time he lived on earth, thinking that the only suffering of Christ would have been restricted to when He entered into His passion … perhaps starting at Gethsemane and continuing on through the Cross. The Catechism teaches here that thinking is not accurate.

Here our Christian theologians introduce the distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience. Here is a distinction that seeks to not isolate the whole of Christ’s obedience one aspect from another, but rather seeks to give us handles to better understand the suffering of Christ.

When we talk about the active obedience of Christ we mean the obedience Christ offered up during life with regard to His perfect obedience to the requirements of God’s Law. When we speak of the passive obedience of Christ we are referring to the fact that Christ, in spite of His perfect obedience to the Law during His life, Christ received the due penalty for God’s law having been violated.

Now, it is easier to think of Christ’s suffering under the distinction of His passive obedience whereby Christ suffers vicariously in our place for our sins. On the Cross Christ suffers the wrath of God as a sin offering, suffering as our substitute for the sin of the elect. The suffering in his passive obedience is not a suffering He deserves in Himself but a suffering He is required to meet as our representative – as in our place.

This passive substitutionary obedience and suffering is clearly taught in passages like,

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. II Cor. 5:21

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. I Pt. 3:18

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Gal. 3:13

So, it is easy enough, to trace the suffering of Christ in relation to His passive obedience … In and through His passive obedience Christ suffers the just penalty of the wrath of God against Sin. In His passive obedience Christ on the Cross is the representative sinner vicariously suffering for the sins of the elect.

But now we pause to ask if the Catechism is correct by teaching that Christ suffered during all the time on earth? Scripture here points us in a direction that confirms the Catechism’s teaching when Isaiah writes;

He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Is. 53:3)


The Scripture teaches here that Christ suffered as despised and rejected. Christ is characterized as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief and for anybody who has knows even a wee bit of sorrows and grief, certainly we understand the suffering of that.

Jesus Himself speaks of His suffering when He teaches;

If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. / If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. / Remember the word that I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well; if they kept My word, they will keep yours as well.

Here again is that idea of the suffering Messiah. Who would gainsay that universal hatred is indeed suffering – especially when that hatred is completely unjust? Yet, here is Christ testifying to His own suffering… His own persecution.

Now, the Catechism does teach that His suffering was especially at the end but the suffering at the end was of a piece with all the suffering the Lord Christ underwent during His whole life.

So, when we think of the active obedience of Christ wherein He fulfills all the demands of the law in our place we also think of the suffering of our Lord Christ. We are reminded that this suffering in His active obedience was a suffering that was redemptive – that is to say it is suffering in our place and for us. It remains a vicarious suffering.

We are reminded then of the suffering Messiah. We see His suffering as He lived His life in a world that was in unremitting rebellion against His Father. We see His suffering in His tears over the death of His friend Lazarus and in the lament we find Him anguishing over the refusal of Jerusalem to repent. These could not be isolated moments of suffering. Our Lord Christ healed the sick, delivered the possessed, raised the dead but in the doing of all that would He not have suffered seeing the weight of sin’s curse and its effect on creation?

In teasing this out … the suffering found in both the active and passive obedience of Christ we learn that the Catechism is Scripturally correct in putting in our mouths and in our memories the truth that;

“During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against sin”

The Hymn writers teach us the same;

Man of Sorrows
What a name
For the Son of God who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim
Hallelujah, what a Savior

There is something else going on here in the Catechism as it reflects Scripture that is going on here. In the Catechism’s question and answer with its emphasis on the suffering of the Lord Christ is pointing us towards the fact that the Christian faith is definitionally cruciform. By this I mean that the Catechism, when it teaches us about Christ’s suffering, in it’s relating that suffering to Christ and His being the sin-bearer.

There is a subtle point I want us to see here. It is subtle but vitally important all the same. By connecting Christ’s suffering as being related to bearing God’s wrath against sin the Catechizers, following Scripture, teaches us that the heart of the Christian faith is Christus pro me – Christ for me…. or in the corporate … “Christ for us.”

The Christian life though it is definitionally inclusive of “following Christ,” does not find its beating heart in a definition that Christianity means following Jesus.

I bring this out because I heard Tucker Carlson, say this week;

“A Christian is one who follows Jesus.”

Tucker Carlson

We give Carlson some latitude because he is young in the Christian faith. However, this is not the heart of what it means to be a Christian. No … this is the liberal definition of Christian. Liberals are forever asking “What would Jesus Do.” It is the Biblical Christian who promotes instead as the main question; “What did Jesus do.” And the answer to that question is the Gospel … is the primary definition of Christianity. What Jesus did is in the incarnation he added a Human nature, with the purpose of obeying all God’s law perfectly vicariously (in the place of) His people as conjoined with the purpose of suffering the just penalty of God’s wrath against both our sin nature and all our sinful acts that flow from that sin nature.

The proper definition of Christian is one who owns the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ for their sins. That needs be the first thing that is said when someone asks “what is a Christian.” A Christian is someone who confesses;

A. During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.1

Now, let us begin our descent in landing this morning by noting the whole theme of Christ’s suffering being substitutionary. I haven’t used that word yet in this morning though I have frequently used the words “vicarious” and “vicariously.” This is a word, like propitiation, that we seldom use anymore in our communication. As Christians though it needs to be in our vocabulary because it is at the heart of our Christian faith.

Vicarious communicates the idea of substitution and so, vicarious suffering refers to the concept of enduring pain or hardship on behalf of others.

We have heard already the verses that teach that Christ suffered in our place, in our stead, on our behalf, in our place … or simply for us.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, I Peter 3:18

And again,

so also Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him. Hebrew 9:28

Here we are required to bring out the truth that Christ suffers as our representative. He suffers the suffering and death that we deserved. The wrath of God against the Messiah is not a wrath against His person. Scripture gives us the voice of the Father saying twice; “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

So, the suffering of Christ explained as the wrath of God is not against The Lord Jesus Christ in and of Himself. The suffering of Christ is explained by the fact that Christ is in our place. He suffers the suffering that was ours to suffer. He suffers as our Federal Head. All the deserved suffering of the elect in His redeemed church Christ suffers in our stead. He suffers the wrath of God so that we have peace with God.

This explains why every Christian minister of every generation commands all men everywhere to repent. If they will not own this suffering of Christ in their place … if they will not see the love of the Father and Son in His suffering vicariously then the terrible eternal wrath of God remains upon them. Oh, why will you suffer God’s eternal judgment? Why will you continue stiff necked and unrepentant? Why will you curse humility and continue to walk in pride?

So vicarious is the idea of substitution … Christ vicariously suffered in our place, on our behalf, for us. This is the beating heart of our undoubted Christian faith and during a Biblical Lent it is the theme that we are drawn back to over and over again.

And it is this Reformed theme that makes Lent different from the Lent of Rome. By learning the Cross we understand that Christ’s suffering requires no improvement on our part. Our repenting during Lent, our clothing ourselves with humility during Lent, our suffering during Lent are done out of a pursuit for an unsure redemption … a wrestling with God to gain a still uncertain salvation. Our repenting, clothing ourselves with humility, our suffering during Lent is in gratitude for the certainty of the salvation that could not be improved upon because of Christ’s humility and suffering in our place.

Now, there is just one more loose strand to clarify before we close and that is the language used by the catechism can easily confuse some folks. It is this phrase I refer to;

“During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.”

Now, we have learned this morning about the vicarious nature of all this. We have labored to demonstrate the suffering that was found both in Christ’s active and passive obedience. Now we want to clean up that little phrase “the whole human race.”

People will and do easily walk away from this thinking that Christ suffered and died for each and every person who has ever lived. We want to draw out that is not the intent of the Catechizers.

First of all, we note that the Catechism has taught us that we are redeemed by this vicarious suffering of Christ. Now, if we take that idea and marry it to the idea of Christ bearing the wrath of God against the whole human race we would have to conclude that the writers of the Catechism were Universalist. If Christ suffered for the whole human race in the sense of every man who has ever lived than every man who has ever lived would be redeemed. This is Universalism.

The catechism nowhere else teaches this idea.

Now, some will insist that Christ suffered for the sin of every single man but every single man, they will say, has to have faith in Christ and if they don’t have faith in Christ then they will die in their sins. The problem here is found in the fact that a lack of faith is sin and if Christ suffered for the sins of every single person who has ever lived then His suffering paid for the sin that is found in a lack of faith.

So, unless we believe that the Catechism is teaching Universalism we cannot believe that it is teaching that Christ died either literally for each and every person who has ever lived or even hypothetically for each and every person who has ever lived. Saying Christ bore the wrath of God for the whole human race proves too much.

The resolution to this is to understand that the death of Christ is sufficient for the whole human race … that is, that the death of Christ is not lacking in any degree

The Canons of Dordt teach this;

The death of the Son of God is the only and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sin, and is of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.

The Canons of Dordt also teaches the particularity of Christ’s death;

For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of His Son should extend to all the elect, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation; that is, it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross, whereby He confirmed the new covenant, should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to Him by the Father; that He should confer upon them faith, which, together with all the other saving gifts of the Holy Spirit, He purchased for them by His death; should purge them from all sin, both original and actual, whether committed before or after believing; and having faithfully preserved them even to the end, should at last bring them, free from every spot and blemish, to the enjoyment of glory in His own presence forever.

A Reading List On Covenant Theology

A friend wrote asking for a list of books I’ve read touching Covenant theology. He thought given the current controversy on identifying the Israel of God (who Israel has become in NT theology) that it would be a profitable list. All of these books will make clear that OT Israel  was the cocoon that was shuffled off when it became the butterfly that is the Church, and so there are no further promises left to the Israel after the flesh.

So, I offer this list, as I randomly have recalled my reading over the decades;

1.) Cornelius Venema – Christ And Covenant Theology: Essays on Election, Republication

Deals with issues surrounding the rise of covenant theology in relation to R2K theology.

2.) Stephen Myers – God to Us: Covenant Theology in Scripture

Is intended as something of a primer in Reformed covenant theology

3.) O. Palmer Robertson – Christ of the Covenants

Traces Christ through the unfolding of the one covenant of grace.

4.) Charles D.Provan – The Church is Israel Now: The Transfer of Conditional Privilege

Demonstrating, from Scripture that it is Dispensationalists who practice replacement theology by replacing the Church with unbelieving Israel

5.)  David Howeldra – Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two?

Argues that the promises to OT Israel are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

6.) O. T. Allis – Prophecy & The Church

Absolutely destroys Dispensationalism’s teaching that promises remain to physical Israel. Best book I’ve ever read unraveling Dispensationalism’s errant views of covenant theology.

7.) O Palmer Robertson – The Israel of God

Robertson examines the OT prophecies related to land, God’s people, the coming Kingdom and other topics and shows how Christ and his church fulfill those prophecies today.

8.) Francis Roberts – God’s Covenants: The Mystery and Marrow of the Bible

Five volumes. I’ve only made it through Vol. 1. Exhaustive explanation of the covenant of Grace as understood in the classical “Covenant of Works,” “Covenant of Grace” paradigm.

9.) Rowland Ward – God and Adam

A handy volume giving a birds eye view of various explanations of the mechanics of covenant theology. Very helpful.

10.) Geerhardus Vos – Biblical Theology: Old and New Testament

Vos was an absolute genius. I’ve read everything I have been able to find by him. You will not understand Covenant theology until you have read Vos. Unfortunately Vos was Amil so read discerningly on that score.

11.) G. K. Beale – A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New

Beale argues that every major concept of the New Testament is a development of a concept from the Old and is to be understood as a facet of the inauguration of the latter-day new creation and kingdom. The emphasis is on the continuity between OT and NT which only covenant theology can provide. Beale is another genius who has greatly helped me. Again … he is Amill.

12.) Jonathan Gerstner – Wrongly Dividing the Truth

An needed attack on Dispensationalism that presupposes Covenant theology.

13,) Geerhardus Vos, ‘The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology’ in Richard B. Gaffin (ed.), Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: the Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos

14.) J. D. Hall & Joel Webbon – The Hyphenated Heresy: Judeo-Christianity

Though not strictly a book on covenant theology this book does demonstrate repeatedly that the Church is the inheritor of all the promises to Israel and is today the “Israel of God.”  Clearly teaches that OT physical Israel has been replaced (fulfilled) by the Church.

14.) See also the appropriate sections of Systematic Theologies

Robert Letham
Louis Berkhof
Charles H. Hodge
Herman Bavinck
Robert Reymond
Francis Turretin
R. L. Dabney
John Calvin (Institutes 2: 9-11)
Herman Hoeksema

HH offers a decidedly different view of the covenants seeing more continuity between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace than what might be termed “classical Reformed” theology. However, HH makes some interesting points that are worthy of consideration.

These are what I remember reading off the top of my head. If I recall more I will edit and add them at a later date.

Open Theism As The “Solution” To The Arminian Problem?

I grew up Arminian (Wesleyan). I know their theology well as I studied it in Undergrad earning one of my Bachelors in an associated field (Religion-Philosophy). I still have the blue test books from those Theology classes in my file cabinets. In those test books I received top score for my ability to slice and dice Calvinism, along with praise from the Professors.

Along the way, resisting as much as I possibly could, I gave up Arminianism and was born again, again. I became a Christian (sometimes known as Calvinist).

One of the hurdles I could not get over, thus pushing me towards Calvinism was the problem found in all standard Arminianism. Evangelical Arminianism, teaching Hypothetical Universalism (the idea that Christ died for all people without exception) had to likewise hold that all men has libertarian free will. If Christ dies for everybody, but everybody isn’t saved than that factors that divides those who are saved and who are not saved, per Arminianism is the fact that some cooperated with prevenient grace while others did not cooperate with prevenient grace. The reason that some cooperate with prevenient grace (the grace that goes before salvation) while others don’t cooperate is the result of some using their Libertarian free will to choose to be regenerated while others use their Libertarian free will to say no to God’s resistible grace.

The Arminians have this problem though. If man has this kind of Libertarian free will to tell God to “go pound sand,” as the Spirit of God intends to convert them, then Arminians can no longer teach that God is sovereign and so controls all things. Still, Arminians would teach that while God may not be exhaustively sovereign such as their Calvinist foe’s teach God still did foreknow all things that would come to pass even if God didn’t predetermine or predestine the beginning from the end the way the Calvinist insisted.  So, as it pertains to individual salvation, per the Arminian God knows (but does not determine) how each person will use their Libertarian free will in order to either accept or reject the “Gospel Invitation.”

The problem that eventually presented itself to the “smarter than the average bear” Arminian is that they understood that if God foreknows everything that happens or will happen, God thereby renders that thing He foreknows as certain. God in foreknowing all that will happen has in that foreknowing made certain all that will happen. If God foreknew from eternity past that I would mock Arminian theology in 2026, then that mocking had to happen. I would not be free to not mock Arminian theology. This is true even if we, along with the Arminian, reject that God makes everything happen. The relevant point is that God’s foreknowing of an event to occur before it occurs makes it certain that the event will occur even if God is not the causative source of said event happening.  Even if there is some other causality to my mocking Arminian theology, God foreknew that the other causality would lead me to mock Arminian theology and so the mocking of Arminian theology in 2026 by me would by necessity come to pass. Exhaustive divine foreknowledge necessitates determinism, whether or not determinism is the result of divine causality. The nub of the matter is that some Arminians began to understand they were on the horns of a dilemma here. What to do?

Well, there really are only two choices. The Red Pill solution was “become a Calvinist,” and deny Libertarian free will. Forty years ago plus, I took the Red Pill. However, some former Arminians took the Blue Pill and so denied foreknowledge. The Blue Pill allowed the Arminian to become more consistently inconsistent. By taking the Blue Pill the Arminian moved from Arminianism to Open Theism. The Arminians joined the Open Theists (a form of Socinianism) and so rejected the idea of the Arminian doctrine of God’s foreknowledge. For the Open Theist if God was sovereign He was sovereign quite apart from any exhaustive foreknowledge. Of course the idea that God can be sovereign without either Calvinist sovereignty or Arminian foreknowledge is just a surd.  The Arminian by choosing Open Theism became more consistently inconsistent inasmuch as he now has found a way to consistently embrace Libertarian free will. However he has done so at the cost of magnificently gross inconsistency inasmuch as he has embraced a God, who by definition, has been drained of all that makes God, God. As it were the Arminian, when affirming Libertarian free will, was already worshiping a emasculated god. However, in moving to Free Will Theism (Open Theism) he is now worshiping a emasculated man as god said loudly. The Arminian has embraced anthropological consistency at the cost of theological inconsistency.

It seems like, to a certain degree, Open Theism has been beaten back. However, Arminianism remains the major report in terms of numbers as among American Evangelicals. Very few people believe in a muscular doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Most Evangelicals … even most Reformed, in a De facto sense, embrace enough of the shards of Arminianism to bring into doubt their Calvinistic bona fides.

And thus the Church in the West continues to limp along.

Addendum:

Touching Libertarian free will we would note that for every bit of Libertarian free will that you give to man you take that much from the Triune God. Man cannot have Libertarian free will without God not having Libertarian free will.

The Scripture exhaustively teaches that God exhaustively controls all things (Lamentations 3:37-38;  Rom. 8:28, 11:33-36; Eph. 1:11). As that control extends to our free decisions we read in Scripture wherein God controls the free decisions of people. (Joseph’s Brothers – Gen. 45:5-8; Cyrus – Isa. 44:28; Judas – Lk. 22:28, Acts 2:23-24, 4:27-28, 13:27.)

Now, that people do what they want to do while it still being the case that God is in exhaustive control is taught by the doctrine of Compatibilism. Compatibilism teaches that man does what he wants to do and is not coerced in his decision making. Man’s decision are voluntary. Compatibilism further teaches that man’s freedom presuppose his nature. Fallen man is free to choose all kinds of option  but because of his fallen nature, fallen man can never choose not to sin. Compatibilism teaches that whatever it is we voluntarily choose it does not mean we had the freedom to choose otherwise. We were pushed to choose whatever we choose consistent with pre-existing influence, inclination, or disposition. In choosing nobody starts from neutral in choosing what they choose. Considered from the macro understanding though, compatibilism affirms that all wills are in bondage to God’s sovereignty.

 

Quote From RJR’s “The One & The Many,” & Commentary

“Wherever a society has a naturalistic religion, grounded on the concept of continuity, man faces the total power of the state. This is clearly true today, as it was in antiquity. The Scythians “worshipped the elements” and practiced veneration of ancestors, and the royal Scyths “ruled as despots.” The Parthians practiced a religion affirming continuity, and their monarchs had “nearly despotic” power and claimed the title of “Kings of Kings.” The list can be extended at length. Where there is no transcendental law and power in a separate and omnipotent being, then power has a wholly immanent and immediate source in a state, group, or person, and it is beyond appeal. The state becomes the saving power and the source of law; it becomes the priestly agency of its own total power and the manifest power of its divinity. Such a state becomes god walking on the earth, and its every tyranny is identified as liberty, because being and meaning are both identifiable in terms of the state. Since it is held that there is no law beyond the state, meaning is what the state defines, and liberty is what the state provides. In this faith, for man to be free means to be in the state. More than that, for man to be, he must be a member of the state, for being is one and continuous, and salvation is a metaphysical unification of all being.”

The One and the Many
R. J. Rushdoony

1.) It is more accurate to say that where the God of the Bible is not owned and worshipped in a social order the consequence is that the State will absolutized and so worshiped, whether in a de facto or de jure sense. The citizens will become subjects and all will believe that “in the state we live and move and have our being.”

2.) All social orders must have transcendence in order to operate. They can choose either from a transcendent, transcendent (the God of the Bible) or they can create an immanent transcendent. Of course, an immanent transcendent is a contradiction but when a transcendent, transcendent is rejected then something must serve in its place. What happens with an immanent transcendent is that something subjective (usually the State as seen in history) is inflated with a pseudo objective transcendence so as to become that reality against which all other realities find their point of reference in order to find definition.  When this happens the social order, as a whole is in transgression against the first commandment.

3.) Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of this in history occurred during the Soviet Show Trials of the 1930s. In that setting Stalin put on trial Communists who had been with Lenin during the success of revolutionary Marxism. They were the old lions of the revolution; Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and  Radek. These men went into the kangaroo court show trial where their guilt was predetermined. Though innocent, they pled guilty to the charges of treason brought against them. Now, many have offered that the false admission of guilt was due to threats against family members of the accused by Stalin. However, the accused knew that Stalin was no man to keep his word. No, their admission of guilt was because they believed the State was God (the transcendent, transcendent). They had based their whole lives as revolutionaries upon the premise that the State was God. Now, the State (their God) was insisting they were guilty and being true believers they confessed to the guilt that their God said was theirs. If your God says your guilty, you are guilty whether you think you are or not.

4.) In this phrase “because being and meaning are both identifiable in terms of the state,” means that if and when the state becomes a social order’s transcendent, transcendent then the state becomes the arbiter of being and meaning. If you are a chameleon, then whatever color you are placed in as a background becomes the standard by which you know what color to turn to. In the same way when men make the state the transcendent, transcendent they play the chameleon to the state. All being and meaning are determined for the individual in the social order by the state in its metaphorical coloring.

5.) All of this is why Socrates chose to drink the hemlock as opposed to be banished by the state. Death was a better choice then to lose one’s being by being banished from one’s meaning maker.

6.) When this kind of situation obtains then reality becomes increasingly inverted. As Rush notes above, Liberty becomes tyranny and tyranny becomes liberty. We are seeing this in our culture. Reality is being set on its head. Men are women, and women are men. Marriage has no stable meaning and can include all kinds of permutations. Theft by taxation is called “paying your fair share.”

7.) Touching this statement by RJR; “it (the state) becomes the priestly agency of its own total power,” communicates that the tyrannical state playing the transcendent, transcendent not only will claim the authority of “King,” but also will exercise the power of “Priest.” This means that the state will mediate its own “salvation” to those living in the social order. Now, because everything is upside down in tyrannical orders as described this means that what is called “salvation,” will indeed be “destruction.” For example, playing the role of Priest, mediating salvation, the current tyrannical state in the West as said; “in order to be saved we need to import millions of third world people into our lands. This will give us more cheap labor.” However, in the mediation of this salvation, the West is being destroyed. Bureaucrats who work for the state often play this role of priest for the state.

8.) All this proves that a God or god concept is inescapable. All this proves that Atheism is a myth. All men take either the God of the Bible as God or they embrace a false god. There is no such thing as someone or some culture who.which has no god.

9.) When RJR uses this phrase; “salvation is a metaphysical unification of all being,”  Rush is talking about humanist salvations. Humanist salvations require uniformity of all. This is due to the fact that all godheads must have unity. If the state is the god in the social order then all in the social order must be one with the god of the social order. Unification of all being is necessary. This truth explains why Rome persecuted the Christians who would not pinch incense to Caesar. In their refusal to pinch incense to Caesar they were committing treason inasmuch as that refusal was a denial of the metaphysical unification of all being.