Category: Theology

A Few Words On Hillary, E-Mail Servers, & The God State

Today, the FBI Director, James Comey, made it clear that his department would not indict, because they could not indict, Hillary Clinton for her Email server crimes whereby she compromised State security. After Attorney General Lorretta Lynch last week made known that she would follow the FBI’s advice this means that once again, a Clinton walks away from something that if a non-Clinton had perpetrated they’d  be held culpable. Witness Gen. David Petraeus’ conviction for essentially the same crimes for which Hillary will not be indicted.

I am not interested in spending any time in the entrails of Comey’s decision. Suffice it to understand that he doubtless knows that Clinton enemies have a habit of disappearing when about to slap the Clinton mafiosi family.  What I am interested in doing is bringing out a theological point in connection to this event that I doubt you’ll read anywhere else.

This event where Hillary skates above the law once again proves that one way to locate the God in any given social order is to locate the person or institution which can not be held responsible. One characteristic of being god or a god figure is the fact that there is no one to whom you can be held responsible to for anything that you do.

This is true of the God of the Bible, the only true God. God is not answerable to anyone. This is where Arminians make their error by constantly trying to make God answerable to themselves. God is not answerable to anyone save Himself and He is under no compulsion to actually provide answers for His actions. One of the perks of being God is that you are not answerable to the non-gods. This was demonstrated in the account in the book of Job. When you read the book of Job you see that Job has all kinds of questions about God’s actions. You also see that Job never gets an answer to any of those questions demanding that God be accountable to Job. What Job gets from God, in terms of answers, is basically, I’m God and I owe you no answers.

This is how it should be between the Creator and the creature. God is not responsible to the creature and owes no answer to the creature about anything He does.

And this is exactly how the Federal Leviathan is acting in this Hillary affair. The State is God and Hillary, as the likely soon incarnation of the State, is not answerable to anyone. She could commit cold-blooded murder on FOX News as broadcast across the world and she would not be held responsible, because the God or god concept of any social order by definition can not be held responsible. So, when we see Hillary not being indicted for what she is clearly guilty of it is merely another case proving whereby the State takes itself as being the God of the social order and so not responsible to any law to which mere mortals are responsible.

This demonstrates that we live in a social order where Rex Lex applies to the State and its key minions. Rex Lex means that the King is above the law, or that the King is not responsible to the Law. The same is true for a God, of course. Hillary, as a minion of the God State, and likely soon to be the incarnation of the State as President,  is above the law.

This, in turn, clearly demonstrates that we do not live in a nation ruled by law but rather we live in a nation ruled by men. Which, of course, means that law is applicable only depending upon how well you are or are not connected to people who can make the ramifications of the law go away for those who know them.

The next implication of this is, that since we do not live by the rule of law but by the rule of men, we are no longer responsible to the law. Now, we may still obey what is called the law because we can be hurt by the rule of men who decide to apply the law haphazardly but if the law is not uniformly applied to all men then no men are responsible to a law that has lost all its legitimacy because it is not really law as seen in the fact that it is indiscriminately applied.

Let us be clear here. This kind of action whereby the God-State escapes being held responsible by the law, communicates again that the Government we live under no longer is legitimate. We are living under a illegal Government. As such we owe this illegitimate State no obedience. We still might render obedience up for several reasons, but we do not owe a illegitimate State obedience.

Another couple of points before summing up. Those who are servants of the one true God go out of their way to expose the false gods walking upon the earth. There was a time when Christian clergy would not be silent in the face to an action by the God State where, as in this case, it would seek up to take up the prerogatives of God walking on the earth. For example, when Herod had his brother’s wife that was an act that implied his thinking of being above the law and John the Baptist as God’s man let him have. How many clergy across America will inveigh against the State as false god this Sunday?

Finally, this once again points to the fact that Theocracy is an inescapable category.  All States reflect and descend from some God or god concept. Sometimes, as in this case, the State is its own God concept.

So, today,

1) We learn once again that the State see’s itself as God walking on the earth. As God it cannot be held responsible for its actions. Gods, by definition, are not responsible to anyone.

2.) We learn that the modern State, like Kings of old, are above the law.

3.) We learn that the current State is a illegitimate as well as immoral god. As such the citizenry owes it no obedience.

Christians who cannot see this are involved in State-olatry regardless whatever intentions they may have.

Thumbnail Sketch of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement

For a great many Evangelicals, the Cross of Christ is not an objective, vicarious substitution but a public declaration of divine justice designed to stimulate sinners to choose to follow God. This is called the Governmental theory of the Atonement. In this theory the Father punishes the Son on the Cross NOT as a substitute paying for the designated penalty of a designated elect. Rather the Father is using the Son’s death as a cosmic public demonstration to all sinners everywhere at all times that justice for sin and disobedience has been paid in the abstract. Not for any one concrete individual or any concrete group (Church) but only in the abstract.

Now, that God has made this public declaration of abstract justice “whosoever” is welcome to return to God if they will. Preaching thus becomes a explanation of why Christ was such a victim of the Father and how feeling sorry for Christ should be a motivator for their repentance. This is where the pitiful sentimental pietistic Preaching comes from that so often happens in our pulpits today. God is not commanding all men everywhere to repent. Instead, Jesus is “softly and tenderly calling, calling for you and for me.”

Note in all this man remains sovereign in his salvation. God has provided an abstract justice but it is up to man to decide whether or not he’ll feel sorry enough for poor poor Jesus hanging on the Cross, punished by the Father, to actually choose him to be the sinners savior.

Of course this model still suffers from implicit Universalism. If the Father really has punished sin in the abstract then even the sin of unbelief in what the Father has done has already been punished in Christ and so the unbeliever in Christ is already saved since justice for sin, unbelief and disobedience has been demonstrated.

Foundation of Successful Epistemology

“Since God is the controller of all things, it is for him to determine whether or not we gain knowledge and under what conditions.”

John Frame
A History of Western Philosophy and Theology — pg. 30

The triune God is the one who gives meaning to all things. He is the one in whom meaning finds meaning. God’s transcendence is the necessary context against which everything as text becomes understandable. To be cast apart from God then is to be cast apart from meaningful meaning in favor of autonomous meaningless meaning. Only in Christ can true meaning be restored to otherwise meaningless man. Without God in Christ as the context wherein all else as text finds meaning we are left trying to understand the world it terms of the world or in terms of our own finite minds.

God, in Christ, furnishes the only criteria by which we can discover true truth since in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Christianity is the sine qua non for epistemological success.

The Inevitability Of Monism With A God Who Is Not Trinitarian

The denial by Jews and Muslims of God’s Trinitarian nature leaves them with a Transcendent yet impersonal God. They retain a “outsided-ness” in their theology but that” outsided-ness” is a Transcendent abstraction that cannot come in contact with humanity and as such all man has left is a humanistic monism and so man must live with a functional outsidelessness.

If they try to cure this lack of existential outsidelessness that occurs with their Transcendent yet impersonal God by making God dependent upon the creature for His actualization unto a personal being then God ceases to be God as he is dependent upon man for His reality.

Rabbinic scholar Abraham Heschel (1907-1972) rightly critiqued Islam for seeing God as ‘unqualified Omnipotence,’ who can never be the ‘Father of mankind,’ and thus is radically impersonal. (See Heschel, ‘The Prophets,’ [New York: Harper, 1962,] pg. 292, 311.) Yet post-biblical Judaism cannot escape Herschel’s critique entirely. The medieval rabbi Maimonides, for example, also confessed an “absolutely transcendent God who is independent of humanity.” (See Reuven Kimelmen, “The Theology of Abraham Heschel,” First Things (Dec. 2009). On the other hand, Kimelmen notes that Heschel commits the opposite error to that of Maimonides (and Islam), namely that of making God dependent on man in a covenantal relationship that both God and man need in order to be who they are. Heschel adopts the rabbinical concept that it is a human witness that in some sense makes God real (Kimelmen, “The Theology of Abraham Heschel”). Once more, God is dependent upon humanity. This is the classic dilemma of a monotheism without the Trinity. Because Heschel does not believe God to be Triune, God depends on man to be personal and therefore cannot be “Wholly Other,” in relation to Creation.

So, it seems, if you are a strict Monotheist you can have a Transcendent God that must be impersonal because He can not have contact with man or you can have a Transcendent God who is only personal because of His dependence upon man. The problem here though is that a God who is dependent upon man in any shape, manner, or form, for His being is neither truly transcendent nor truly God.

It should be said here that this is not only the problem of the Muslim and the Jew, it is also the problem of the neo-orthodox who have so emphasized God’s Transcendence that it is only by a completely subjective encounter with God whereby God can find a subjective status of the personal.

Parts of this Inspired, Parts Paraphrased, and Parts Quoted from
Peter Jones — The Other Worldview — pg. 199-200 (footnote — 27)

Alienism and Particular Atonement

Our current Alienist problem in the Western Calvinist Churches is a reflection of the decline of genuine Reformed soteriology. Biblical and Historical Calvinism has always advocated for limited damnation (particular redemption), where Christ is put forth as a sacrifice for only His people.

In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God’s chief passion is Himself. In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God does all He does for His own interest. He pursues His own interests and in the context of particular redemption this means He willfully limits His affections to His people.

Reformed folk understood that this had implications. As God’s love was particular so Reformed folk refused the idea of “the Brotherhood of all men.” If God restricts His love so that it is particular so man’s love can be particular as well. In other words, God’s love for His own is a communicable attribute.

If God does not restrict His love so that He loves all men indiscriminately then men must be pluralists and love all men indiscriminately. This is the destruction of family, clan, and nations and the embrace of universal love.

The connection here is that as Calvinists become weak on Limited Damnation they become strong on the Liberal Doctrines of the “Fatherhood of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.”