Mike Horton … From Pink to Red

“Social Justice is not a conversation that anyone can opt out of; every day we are engaged in secular rituals that either support of threaten the good of our neighbor. Good theology creates a horizon for reimagining of our relationships to one another as well as to God. Toxic theology, or even good theology perverted in the service of empire and ideology, has had disastrous cultural effects.

Some culture warriors on the right have claimed recently that ‘social justice’ is code for secular humanism; its very mention should raise ‘Red’ flags. Part of that is due to the tendency sometimes to separate the Great Commission from the Great Commandment. The gospel does not relieve us of the duty to love God and neighbor…

Ultimately, I am called to [justice] because my neighbor is created in God’s image. As God’s image bearers, especially those whose voices are ignored or marginalized, these neighbors are God’s own claim upon me and my life. Through the cries of the ignored and marginalized, I hear God’s call ‘Adam where art thou?’ And I dare not generalize or deflect this summons, replying with Cain, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?'”

Mike Horton 
R2K Wokey Fanboy
Modern Reformation Article
Justification and Justice

1.) Social Justice is a Marxist trope. The only Justice that exists is biblical Justice as measured against God’s explicit Law-Word. The very use of the language without strongly delineating it from it’s Marxist home is suggestive that Horton is wearing a uniform colored red.

2.) There is no such thing as “secular rituals,” if by “secular rituals” Horton means rituals that are not driven by religious and theological a-priories. There is no such thing as a “ritual” that is secular. The whole notion is oxymoronic.

3.) The whole sentence about reimagining horizons is mere sentimental gobbledygook. There is no need to reimagine relationships with God and Man. We have been told directly what that relationship is and that is to Love God and Man. The only standard to measure love to God and man and is to act towards each consistent with God’s Law. The honoring of God’s Law is the definition of love to God and Man and not Horton’s precious Social Justice and reimaginative horiozons.

4.) Bad theology always has a disastrous cultural effect. No Duh. We are seeing daily the disastrous cultural effects that Horton’s Radical Two Kingdom theology is having.

5.) It is precisely because the Gospel does not relieve us of our duty to love God and neighbor that we are required to spit every time we hear “Social Justice.” “Social Justice” is hatred for God and neighbor since “Social Justice” presupposes a cultural Marxist world and life view. Horton is a functional Marxist.

6.) No… ultimately I am called to Justice because God calls me to Justice. I am not ultimately called to justice because my neighbor has the Imago Dei. To say the former vis-a-vis the latter is the difference between being a humanist and being a Christian.

7.) Voices that are ignored or marginalized (i.e. — trannies, sodomites, Lesbians, minorities who form the Marxist neo-proletariat vanguard to overturn Christian social order, along with Pedophiliacs, Necrophiliacs, etc.) are ignored and marginalized because they hate Christ. I pray God that such voices are always ignored and marginalized.

8.) My neighbors are not God’s claim on my life. God’s claim on my life is by virtue of His being the Creator and my Redeemer. I don’t even know what it means when someone says “My neighbors are God’s claim on my life.” It is abstracted gobbledygook and means nothing. Sure sounds good though.

9.) Through the “ignored and marginalized: I don’t hear Cain’s “Am I my Brother’s Keeper” instead I hear God’s “Well done thou good and faithful servant.”

10.) Horton is a faithless shepherd. Stay away from this Cultural Marxist wanna-be.

 

Chit Chatting with the Clergy regarding Nashville and Returning Fire

“The baseline question is: do you care more about yourself and your rights or do you care more about loving others and contributing to the good and healing of all. This world has consistently and clearly answered that question over and over again. But the Kingdom has a very different answer.”

Jay Simmons
PCA Pastor
All Souls Church — St. Louis Mo.

Let’s apply this to the Nashville event.

Because of my caring about loving others I know that insisting on second amendment rights may well have meant that someone was firing back at the perp who did not consider God’s sovereign right to His people’s lives. Because of the embrace of my 2nd amendment rights I may well be in the position to love others by firing back at lunatics.

So, yeah … I do care more about myself and my God given rights and in doing so I could, if this situation arose in a setting I was in, show my love to others by contributing to their good and healing by returning fire on a perp with deadly intent.

So we see that the Kingdom most assuredly does NOT have a different answer.

Bret L. McAtee
Pastor — Charlotte Christ the King Reformed Church

p.s. — Do you ever wake up with the cold sweats worried that God is going to hold you accountable for what comes out of your mouth as His servant?

At this point one Ty Burk steps in to defend Rev. Simmons. That exchange is below;

TB wrote,

So, you are attempting to use the Nashville mass shooting, that wasn’t stopped by an armed citizen, as an argument for armed citizens because they *might* prevent mass shootings? Continuing that logic, more firearms would result in fewer mass shootings/firearm fatalities. More armed citizens = less firearm fatalities is the argument.

Bret responds,

1.) Well, it is dang certain the case that an armed citizen will have more success at preventing a mass shooting then an unarmed citizen will have at preventing a mass shooting. This isn’t rocket science chum.

2.) I know that more armed citizens who are informed concerning weapons and drilled on the use of weapons would lead to fewer fatalities.

3.) One thing that is certain sure is that revoking or diminishing the 2nd amendment will lead to more shootings and more deaths. I mean, you don’t really think that someone who has no problem violating the law in murdering someone will pause for a skinny second and be inhibited by a law that says they can’t have firearms? If you criminalize owning guns only criminals will own guns.

4.) Not only do more armed citizens = less firearm fatalities but more armed citizens = the FEDS thinking twice before they decide to tyrannize the citizenry. Of course, you perfectly understand that is the whole reason for the 2nd amendment right? You realize that the reason our Founders gave us a 2nd amendment was because they had experienced government tyranny and knew the only way to forestall government tyranny was to make sure the citizenry was armed to the teeth, right?

TB writes,

However, that position is not supported by any data or experience.

Bret responds,

Horse Hockey!

Experience as well as common sense tells us that people who have weapons who can fire back at people who are firing at them will always have more of a fighting chance to survive.

TB writes,

The number of mass shootings prevented by armed citizens remains dismally low. Additionally, as the number of firearms/their accessibility increase, so does firearm fatalities. That’s not an opinion. It’s substantiated fact.

Bret responds,

I don’t believe you and I am convinced that you are at this moment practicing the art of gaslighting.
Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 every day.

Most often, the gun is never fired, and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.

Every year, 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.

60 percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. Forty percent of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed.

Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot.

Fewer than 1 percent of firearms are used in the commission of a crime.
If you doubt the objectivity of the site above, it’s worth pointing out that the Center for Disease Control, in a report ordered by President Obama in 2012 following the Sandy Hook Massacre, estimated that the number of crimes prevented by guns could be even higher—as many as 3 million annually, or some 8,200 every day.

TB now regretting getting involved with me writes,

Please expound on the position that firearm ownership is a God given right.

Bret responds,

“All careful studies and lawful endeavors to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting, by just defense, against violence, protecting and defending the innocent.” (Westminster Larger Catechism Q135).

The great Puritan commentator on the Bible, Thomas Ridgeley (1667-1734), in his commentary on the Westminster Larger Catechism quotes the Catechism itself as I have above and then in his commentary on Sixth Commandment duties, Ridgeley says,

“We should use all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life, and the life of others [because]…. man is the subject of the divine image…. We are also to defend those who are in imminent danger of death…. Moreover, in some instances, a person may kill another in his own defence, without being guilty of the breach of this commandment….”

Ridgeley goes on to comment that if we cannot disarm an enemy threatening our life, or flee from him, “we do not incur the least guilt, or break this commandment, if we take away his life to preserve our own; especially if we were not first in the quarrel, nor gave occasion to it by any injurious or unlawful practices.”

Also we note the Heidleberg catechism

105. Q. — What does God require in the sixth commandment?

A.

… Moreover, I am not to harm or recklessly endanger myself. 3

3. Mt 4:7; 26:52; Rom 13:11-14

.

What else can we call a refusal to defend one’s self and one’s people except a harming or a recklessly endangering of one’s self? This is something that the Heidelberg forswears.

You see the Heidelberg Catechism insists that the keeping of the Sixth commandment means that I am not to harm or recklessly endanger myself. It doesn’t take much to argue that we are increasingly living in times when not carrying a weapon on us for self-defense and the protection of the judicially innocent could easily be seen as that which constitutes a reckless endangering of ourselves and others.

Of course, to appeal again to the Scriptures as our primary source of authority we look at Proverbs,

“Like a muddied spring or a polluted well is a righteous man who gives way to the wicked.”

Proverbs 25:26

Mind if I just call you “OIe Muddy,” Ty?

TB writes,

Where are we, as Christians, promised safety and security? Where are Christian instructed to take up arms to secure safety and security? Indeed, where are Christian instructed to use lethal force for any means?

Bret responds,

Proverbs 25:26

Pulpit Commentary, on Proverbs 25 verse 26. – … a righteous man giving way to the wicked.
“A good man neglecting to assert himself and to hold his own in the face of sinners, is as useless to society and as harmful to the good cause as a spring that has been defiled by mud stirred up or extraneous matter introduced is unserviceable for drinking and prejudicial to those who use it.”

Illustration — Cow Pond Farm

“But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the Faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

1 Timothy 5:8

Fathers and husbands are required by Almighty God to provide for their families. This includes not only providing food, housing, clothing, education, medical care, love, discipleship and spiritual guidance, but also protection. Of what worth is all the other provision if one does not provide protection as well? Anyone who fails to provide the necessary protection for their family has denied the Faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Those using Anabaptist Pacifist reasoning will say things like, “We should be those who trust God,” as if one cannot carry a weapon and trust God at the same time. We are to trust God for our daily provision. Is the implication of that, that we should not earn a living since God will provide? We are to trust God to keep us safe at the workplace. Does this mean if I am working with Jets, as I used to, I quit wearing headphones because God is going to keep me safe?

Let us close by noting that God would have us protect man. Not because man in and of himself, apart from God has any inherent value but because man can never be considered apart from God and so is the image of God. Any assault on man finds the root crime being an assault on God. An assault on the King’s man is an assault on the King and when we are protecting the image of God via self-defense against those attacking the King’s men we are protecting the King. If we allow God’s judicially innocent Image bearers to be assaulted and threatened without response, it is not merely that we are not protecting men, it is a case that we are communicating that God Himself is not worthy of being defended. This Image of God is that which explains why men should be defended.

God puts such value on His Image bearers that He sent forth the God-man to reconcile God to His elect image bearers. Christ died for the sins of His people so that they, as Image bearers of God, would be rescued. If God, at cost to Himself would set forth His own son as the propitiation of the Image Bearers sin how much more should we seek to protect and defend men as Image bearers?

TB writes,

Your imagined scenario of showing your love for others by returning fire recalls the assault of Malchus by Simon Peter in the Gospels. The chief priest and elders come with Judas and a crowd to seize Jesus. Malchus grabs Jesus and, in an attempt to defend Jesus, Peter draws a sword and cuts off Malchus’ ear. Peter is admonished by Jesus to put his sword back in its place. And, in Luke’s account, even heals Malchus by reattaching his ear.

Bret responds,

When the situation is one where I am trying to stop Jesus from going to the cross I’ll keep the above in mind. However, when I am in other situations where I am trying to protect the life of the judicially innocent I’ll keep the Scripture, catechisms, and confessions in mind as limned out above.

TB writes,

I’m of the opinion that Christ, the foundation of our religion who never promised safety/protection, nor instructed others to use lethal force to secure safety/protection, who sent his Disciples out (unarmed) to suffer deaths as martyrs (not one raising so much as a sword to defend themselves), and who never raised a hand in self defense against false accusations and unjust death on the cross, would have a similar rebuke for position expressed in your comment.

Bret responds,

Frankly, I don’t care what your opinion is Ty. Clearly, your faith is informed by lunatic Anabaptist categories. We Reformed manly men never went in for that kind of cowardly retreatism. Have fun with your effeminate religion. Don’t worry though… if you’re someplace where someone is lighting up the place with bullets I’ll make sure and not protect you, out of love for you and Jesus.

HC Q. 34 — Jesus Is Lord

Question 34: Wherefore callest thou Him our Lord? 

Answer: Because He hath redeemed us, both soul and body, from all our sins, not with gold or silver, but with His precious blood, and hath delivered us from all the power of the devil; and thus hath made us His own property.3

The Heidelberg catechism continues to follow the Apostles Creed and in doing so it moves from the affirmation that Jesus Christ was the only begotten son of God to the affirmation that Jesus is Lord.

The Lordship of Jesus upon the life of every Christian is indisputable. Throughout the Scripture record Jesus is referred to as “Lord.” Jesus Himself, addressing His disciples could say;

“You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am.” — John 13:13

Upon seeing the resurrected Jesus the disciples Thomas could exclaim, “My Lord and my God.”

Peter on the day of Pentecost preached;

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”  — Acts 2:36

Jesus Christ is indeed, as St. John says in his Apocalypse,  “Lord of Lords and King of Kings.”

The answer to Lord’s Day 34 deals with the why of Christ’s Lordship. Why is Jesus Christ the Lord to Christians?

And the first part of that answer is that Jesus Christ’s Lordship is due to the fact that He hath redeemed us in our totality (body and soul) from all our sins with that which was more valuable than gold or silver, to wit, His own precious blood.

Follow the assumptions of this answer.

1.) If we were Redeemed that implies that we were under a previous ownership

2.) As such we have gone from the owner that had claim upon us before being redeemed to another owner upon being redeemed.

This teaches us mortal men that we are never in a state where we operate as unowned by one or another Lord. Christians sing enthusiastically with Dylan;

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Further Q. 34 teaches us that we can only be owned by Jesus as we are freed by the only price paid that can free us — the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

1 Pet. 1:18–19, Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

The idea of being redeemed from our “vain conversation” received by the tradition of their forefathers is that we have been bought back from a lifestyle that was unwholesome, unhealthy, and deadly. That lifestyle handed down by our unredeemed Kin is a lifestyle as beholden to Satan.

Jesus, having redeemed us from that lifestyle futility as received from our forefathers as they labored for the ends of their Lord, is now our Lord and Master, and He in turn delivers us from our previous inherited vain conversation (lifestyle futility/meaninglessness) to a lifestyle that is no longer, vain, futile, or meaningless. He is Lord and it is good to have Jesus as Lord, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light. We are now the property of Jesus Christ and He takes responsibility as our owner for all things that concern us as under both categories of body and soul.

Being delivered from our vain conversations inherited by our imprisoned and shackled Fathers Jesus hath made us His own property.

This means that Jesus has property rights in the Christian. We belong to Him. We are emblazoned on the palms of His hands (Isaiah 49:16) and we are stamped on our foreheads with His stamp (Revelation 22:14). We are His property and so we naturally refer to Jesus as Lord.

It is because Jesus is their Lord that the Christian refuses to live as if any other person or entity is their Lord.  It is because Jesus is their Lord that the Christian refuses to place their children underneath the tutelage of those who are themselves the flacks and minions for some other Lord. It is because Jesus is their Lord that the Christian takes so seriously God’s law in its third use for their living.

“What exactly is it that distinguishes the Calvinist? It is the fact that the Calvinist, more than others, humbles himself before the law of his God, through which a higher, more sophisticated sense of jurisprudence is also cultivated in us.”

– Abraham Kuyper

This conviction that Jesus is Lord for the Christian has animated the Christian through the centuries with a white hot determination to live as only their Lord’s bondsmen. The Biblical Christian as such as always been a prickly pear when it comes to the issue of liberty. Jesus is our Lord and we Christians are His property and we will not be brought again into any bondage of any other Lord for to do so would make the Christian an idolater.

The Biblical Christian understands that we were bought with a price and therefore we are determined, by God’s grace, to therefore glorify God in our bodies, and in our spirits, which, belong to God (I Cor. 6:20).

Baxter, McAtee, & Lusk on Final Justification

“To conclude, it is most clear in Scripture, that our Justification, at the great judgment, will be according to our Works, and to what we have done in the Flesh, whether good or evil; which can be no otherwise than as it was the Condition of that Justification.”

Richard Baxter
Puritan Neonomian

Advocating Final Justification

If one talks about “Final Justification” in terms of our works vindicating and agreeing with our forensic Justification which is/was by Christ alone there should be very little problem since Scripture talks about how our works shall follow us (Rev. 14:13). Further “Final Justification might be allowed as long as everyone agrees that all who were forensically justified will be finally justified without exception. However, to talk about a “final Justification” that somehow eclipses our forensic Justification is just Remonstrant trash. The same kind of trash being dished out by Federal Vision today;

“Final justification, however, is according to works. This pole of justification takes into account the entirety of our lives — the obedience we’ve preformed, the sins we’ve committed, the confessions and repentance we’ve done … God’s verdict over us will be in accord with, and therefore in some sense based upon, the life we have lived.”

Rich Lusk 
Federal Vision Remonstrant

As a brief aside here having interacted with the FV crowd quite extensively in days gone by, keep an eye out for the language above where we find the phrase “in some sense.” That is a weasel phrase that can mean just about anything.

Note, that while I do think that ever increasing obedience should be characteristic of the believer I would never think or say to myself that I really believed that my obedience would be connected to any final justification — even if in the way of vindication. Honestly, I know too well of my ongoing battle to put off the old man and put on the new man created in Christ Jesus to ever take hope in my “obedience performed,” for any kind of Justification. It strikes me that only someone not conversant with the depths of their own sin would write the way Lusk does.

We all would do well to remember our confessions;

“Notwithstanding, the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works are also accepted in Him, not as though they were in this life wholly unblameable, and unreprovable in God’s sight; but that He, looking upon them in His Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.”

Westminster Confession of Faith – 16:6

Kinism and the Disappearance of the Christian God

Once man displaces God, whether in a defacto sense or a dejure sense, man displaces at the same time all things higher than himself as man becomes himself god. The absence of God brings with it the absence of all other higher hierarchies. So, when we see evidence that man is displacing all things higher than himself we know that man has already displaced God as sovereign. The eclipse of God is a leveling event followed by an inevitable move towards egalitarianism.

And here we find the nub of the Kinist’s contention with the modern churchmen. When the Kinist sees man denying the higher than himself thing called race, the higher than himself thing called distinctly Western culture and civilization, the higher thing than himself called our patrimony, the higher thing than himself called nation, we as Kinists see behind all of that that a prior denial of God Himself since the denial of all things higher like race, culture, patrimony and nation is but the consequent of or anticipation of the denial of God Himself.

Similarly, when God as the transcendent other is denied or eclipsed or suppressed the category of “transcendent” doesn’t go away. Instead what fills the category of “transcendent” is some immanent transcendent that partakes of the “otherness” that fallen man has denied or suppressed by denying or suppressing the reality of God. The most common candidate for us today in finding a immanent transcendent that partakes of the quality of “otherness” is alien races, cultures, and faiths. This explains multiculturalism.

In multiculturalism the otherness of the stranger and the alien is invested with transcendence since modern man in denying or suppressing God no longer has a transcendent transcendence in his life. The other cultures/races/faiths becomes the new immanent transcendent and is worshiped as such. That which previously partook of the transcendent God in terms of race/culture/faith is thus likewise increasingly hated as it reminds us too much of the God that we can’t escape. As such white Western Christian culture and civilization is hated and found wanting at every turn while races/cultures/faiths that are foreign and alien to the God that is denied and suppressed becomes the immanent transcendent other that we desperately need in order to provide the necessary sense of “otherness” having rid ourselves of God’s transcendent transcendence.

And so the formerly Christian white man having as his inheritance the Christian faith and Christian culture, in an act of ethnocide, immolates himself on the altar of the non-white, non-Christian, non-civilized man in order to continue apace his hatred of Christ.

We note this especially about the White European descendent since it is the white European descendent that is most closely associated with the God of the Bible who is the explanation of all that was healthy about Christian Western civilization. We have no doubt that this could also be true in many respects for Christians who embraced Biblical Christianity as coming from other races/ethnicities.

This provides in part an explanation for the appeal of multiculturalism.