Theology – Page 8

McAtee, Christopher Hitchens And Henry Van Til On The Relationship Between Religion And Culture

“The radical, totalitarian character of religion is such, then, that it determines both man’s cultus and his culture. That is to say, the conscious or unconscious relationship to God in a man’s heart determines all of his activities, whether theoretical or practical. This is true of philosophy, which is based upon non-theoretical, religious presuppositions. Thus man’s morality and economics, his jurisprudence and his aesthetics, are all religiously oriented and determined.”

Henry Van Til

Calvinist Concept of Culture

This quote teases out the meaning of the truth that “Theology is the Queen of the Sciences,” as theology is that discipline which makes religion to be religion. Everything is religion/Theology expressed in alternative ways. It is not only the case that “as a man thinketh in his heart so he is,” it is also a case that as cultures think in their heart so they are. This is why we say that culture is properly defined as religion made manifest, or alternatively, “culture is the outward expression of a people’s inward belief.” When I look at any culture I am looking at its theology. When I look at or converse with any person I am engaging their theology incarnated. Show me a culture and I will tell you which God god they are serving. We should seek to think of cultures as facades or masks from which the explicit theological authority principal hides behind to operate.

That’s why there is no talking about culture without theological analysis.

It also explains why the the Thomists are errant and why the followers of Dooweyweeerd are likewise errant as they both refuse to see that all flows out of singular theology / worldview. They each compartmentalize reality into different academic categories and have no unity born of a singular Biblical theology.

This quote also explains the vapidness in arguing that religion is a poison we should all give up.

“Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith.”

~ Christopher Hitchens

It is nothing but the humanistic religion of the now deceased Hitchens which animated him to write that “religion is poison.” Hitchens’ owned a religion of materialism and yet insisted on believing in “reason.” Is reason materialistic? Can I see or taste “reason?” The quote above merely tells me that Hitchens is denouncing religion so as to hide his deeply religious take on “religion.” Hitchens did not escape Henry Van Til’s observation on religion.

Because all this is true a man must be a theologian in order to understand culture. If a man is not a theologian he does not have the categories by which to properly analyze culture. To be sure he may get some things right as he borrows theological capital from a Christian worldview but taken as a whole his analysis will be sorely wanting at critical points.

All of this, in turn, explains why the insistence, as coming from many quarters such as R2K and Stephen Wolfe’s Natural Law project, that clergy should just shut up about anything but soteriology and private ethics since when they speak on other matters they are “getting out of their lane.” The problem is not that clergy speak on issues putatively not in their lane. The problem is that clergy speak on issues which are putatively not in their lane from a non Christian theological/worldview understanding. The problem is not their speaking on subjects… the problem is that they are not particularly Christian when speaking on said subject. The cure isn’t to get clergy to shut up. The cure is to train clergy to think worldviewishly as Biblical Christians.

McAtee Contra Dr. Clay Libolt On The Penal Substitutionary Doctrine Of The Atonement

On his Blog former CRC Pastor Dr. Rev. Clay Libolt begins to explore the idea that all those who hold to the Penal Substitutionary teaching of the Atonement as recorded in Scripture are advancing the idea that God is mean.

I sometimes browse Dr. Libolt’s blog (“The Peripatetic Pastor”) because;

1.) Libolt was my assigned “mentor” when I began to date the CRC. New chaps dating the CRC, according to their book of Church Order have to be assigned mentors, presumably to help the newbee wade into the denomination. This “relationship” between Clay and I was a comedy of theological/ideological explosion. It was the classic example of when an immovable force meets an unstoppable object. Clay was and remains so far left that it is difficult for me to imagine how anyone could get more left. He was in his time the Robespierre of the CRC. Of course I was and am a touch to the right. In our few meetings we would invariably, within seconds, be debating as if the world’s future depended upon convincing one another of their error. To this day, the fact that I was assigned Clay Libolt as a mentor is proof to me that the thrice Holy God has a sense of humor.

2.) I also browse Clay’s blog because it is a handy dandy way to keep up to date on the latest boneheaded theory being advanced by the “Christian” left. Clay reads a good deal of the garbage put out by the “intellectual” left and so it is a way to keep up with the latest WOKE theology. One way to keep one’s mind sharp is by knowing the enemy’s strategy and thinking.

Not that Clay or anyone else cares but I seriously doubt that Clay is a Christian in any historic or Biblical sense of the word, and yet he Pastored one of the CRC flagship churches for decades and by his own accounting had a considerable influence in the denomination, being a voice for the “progressives” as they largely solidified their hold over the denomination during the time he “served.”

Libolt, as noted above, believes that the idea that Jesus Christ, serving as the penalty bearing substitute for the elect makes God mean. Clay writes,

“‘Is God Mean?’ And, in line with the direction of my Bad Theology series, to ask whether a mean God leads to mean politics. (The answer is yes.)”

As you can see in one fell swoop, Libolt has indicted historical biblical theology and contemporary politics as being mean.

Of course a question arises that Libolt does not answer and that question is “Mean to whom?” Certainly, it could not be argued that God is mean to the elect for whom Christ was their substitute, nor I shouldn’t think it could be argued that God was mean to the reprobate who only received what they earnestly desired. I mean is it “mean” to give to people what they want and/or what they deserve?

I would say that in the Penal Substitutionary atonement the only person that God could possibly be seen as being mean to is Himself. Now, I don’t believe that but if we use Libolt’s logic then as it was God Himself in the God-Man Jesus Christ who took on His own punishment for sin then there is no meanness to anyone else since there can be no being mean to those who were substituted for nor for those who weren’t substituted for since they didn’t want to be substituted for and since they received what they deserved.

In the OT we see that what Libolt is advocating just isn’t true. In Genesis 15, God enters into covenant with Abraham and whereas traditionally both parties to a covenant would walk between the slain bodies of the covenantal sacrifices in order to communicate that if the covenant agreement should be violated what had been done to the covenantal sacrifices would be done to the party that broke covenant. However, at this crucial part of the covenant ceremony the God of the Bible who is never described as “mean” chooses to put Abraham to sleep and takes on the full weight of the covenant punishments on himself walking alone between the bodies of the slain animals. This is a “non-mean” covenant of grace.

Then, 2000 years later, in light of the fact that Abraham and his descendents repeatedly violated covenant, God, in the incarnate Jesus Christ, does take upon Himself the covenant curses for Abraham and the true sons of Abraham. And Libolt wants to call that mean?

To the contrary, of course, it is Libolt’s theology that creates for a mean God. Libolt would have us believe a God who does not punish sin thus showing a meanness to those who have had sin visited upon them by those who are mean. Libolt’s “non-mean” God means the judicially innocent never are avenged. The countless millions abused, tortured, and slain by the Soviet and Chinese communist gulag system are told “sucks to be you.” Libolt’s “non-mean” God means is unrighteous. A sovereign God who is also not righteous is a mean God. Libolt serves a mean God and because of that Libolt advances mean politics.

Honestly, this kind of talk (writing) by Libolt has to be considered blasphemous. I continue to pray that Libolt and his leftist legions repent and so discover for the first time the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I also pray that God would remove this kind of theology and its adherents.

Back To Covenant Theology & Infant Baptism … Conversing With Rev. Tim Bushong (Baptist)

Rev. Tim Bushong wrote,

ALL – covenant members ‘know the Lord,’ they are regenerate, have all their sins forgiven, and have God’s Law written on their hearts and minds, and all these blessings are a present reality for all of them, since “He always lives to make intercession for them.”

BLMc responds,

If all covenant members ‘know the Lord’ and are regenerate then why the warning

26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

Clearly, the warning implies that there are those who are in the outward administration of the covenant of grace but who may indeed not have the substance of the covenant (Christ.). All covenant members who have the essence of the covenant do indeed know the Lord but not all who are in the circumference of the covenant necessarily have the substance of the covenant and so need this warning in order that they may take seriously their covenant membership and so not abandon the faith. Those who have the substance of the covenant will take heed of this warning and not trample the Son of God underfoot. It still remains the case even in the Church that not all of Israel is of Israel; that is not all of the Church is of the Church.

TB wrote,

I believe that the particular structure of this version of covenant theology does something unnecessary (at best) to the nature of the New Covenant, and returns to prioritizing OC typology.

BLMc replies,

I believe that the insistence that church membership is universally regenerate is a particular structure of the version of the new and better covenant that finds us insisting that there were two different ways of covenantal belonging, and so two different ways of salvation. The implication here is that in the Old Covenant covenantal belonging was not by grace alone while in the NC covenantal belonging is by grace alone. This is to severely misunderstand the continuity between the OC and the new and better covenant.

TB wrote,

The discontinuity, or maybe just one of the differences, between the Covenants is evinced in the exchange between local and physical (Israel) with the universal and spiritual (the whole world).

BLMc responds,

Of course this is the common Baptist assertion of radical discontinuity between OC and NW. The OC was not merely local as seen in, for example, Jonah’s work with the Assyrians (Nineveh). Also there are other examples such as Naaman’s cleansing and Nebuchadnezzar’s confession in Daniel. As such we see a hint of the Universal and the spiritual in the OC. With the new and better covenant this is expanded but it remains present in the OC. In the same way there is continuity in the OC to the NC with the administration of the covenant sign to the children of the covenant and the expansion of this covenant sign is seen in the fact that not only males are given the sign of the covenant. Still, just as children in the OC were members of the covenant so children in the NC are members of the covenant and so should be given the ratification sign of the covenant. This is a serious error wherein Baptists fail.

TB wrote,

IOW, the price of ‘all the nations’ being included in the New Covenant meant that mere human progeny was no longer the ticket of admission—axiomatically ‘automatically in’ the Covenant by genealogy—as was the case in the Old Covenant.

BLMc responds

This is just not accurate. The price of all nations being included in the NC is clearly articulated in the OC in speaking of Christ;

“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

The price of all nations being included in the NC was not the exclusion of the children of God’s children. The price of all nations being included in the NC was the precious blood of Jesus Christ which spoke of a better covenant than one that was only typified by the blood of bulls and goats.

Baptist thinking on this subject does not treat the Scriptures organically and because of that posits an unfortunate individualistic take on covenant theology.

Romans 6:23 & Grace Alone … Reformed Christianity; No Hope Without It

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 6:23

This one verse alone proves that Roman Catholicism, Federal Vision, Lutheranism and Arminianism are all contrary to Scripture with their implicit or explicit denial that eternal life is purely a grace gift that comes through Jesus Christ.

Note the contrast. Wages are something one earns and what one earns from sin is (eternal) death. This is put in contrast to what is not earned but instead is characterized as pure gift and that as in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This one verse sustains the truth that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and it insists that even our faith is a gift of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So away with all models of salvation that by hook or by crook want to include works in our justification. Even our obedience in sanctification which is a necessary consequence of of justification are gifts that stem from having eternal life.

Salvation is not like Damnation. Damnation is 100% earned and is given as a just wage. Salvation is a free gift that is found in Jesus Christ our Lord ALONE.

Reformed Christianity … No Hope Without It.

Note — Lutheranism is included here because

1.) Lutheranism denies the perseverance of the Saints, teaching that one can lose their salvation, and when that is taught Christianity becomes a works religion.

2.) Lutheranism affirms that people can say “no” to irresistible grace and if people can say “no” to irresistible grace then the difference between those who say “no” and those who say “yes,” is the difference that constitutes a works.

3.) Lutheranism (like Arminianism) teaches that Christ died for all men. If Christ died for all men and all men are not saved then that which differentiates those who are saved that Christ died for and those who are not saved that Christ died for is a good work done by those who are Christ died that activates the death of Christ for them vis-a-vis those who don’t do that good work for whom Christ has also died.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; Mueller & Chambers On The Inconsistency Of Arminianism

“Arminianism, like the Molinist theology on which it drew, is little more than the recrudescence of the late medieval semi-Pelagianism against which the Reformers struggled. Its tenets are inimical to the Pauline and Augustinian foundation of Reformed Protestantism.

In the Arminian system, the God who antecedently wills the salvation of all knowingly provides a pattern of salvation that is suitable only to the salvation of some. This doctrinal juxtaposition of an antecedent, and never effectuated, divine will to save all and a consequent, effectuated, divine will to save some on the foreknown condition of their acceptance of faith, reflects the problem of scientia media. The foreknowledge of God, in the Arminian view, consists in part in a knowledge of contingent events that lie outside of God’s willing and, in the case of the divine foreknowledge, of the rejection of grace by some, of contingent events that not only thwart the antecedent divine will to save all, but also are capable of thwarting it because of the divinely foreknown resistibility of the gift of grace. In other words, the Arminian God is locked into the inconsistency of genuinely willing to save all people while at the same time binding himself to a plan of salvation that he foreknows with certainty cannot effectuate his will. This divine inability results from the necessity of those events that lie within the divine foreknowledge but outside of the divine willing remaining outside of the effective will of God. Arminian theology posits the ultimate contradiction that God’s antecedent will genuinely wills what he foreknows cannot come to pass and that his consequent will effects something other than his ultimate intention. The Arminian God, in short, is either ineffectual or self-contradictory. Reformed doctrine on the other hand, respects the ultimate mystery of the infinite will of God, affirms the sovereignty and efficacy of God, and teaches the soteriological consistency of the divine intention and will with its effects.

Richard A Muller

Grace, Election, and Contingent Choice:

Arminius’s Gambit and the Reformed Response.

Philosophical and Theological Problems with Arminianism in all its various forms.

“1. Free will theology absolutizes the will of man and thereby reduces god to ontological equality with man. The knowledge of god is bound to the temporal actions of men. God cannot know the future acts and actions of men because those actions, products of a libertarian volition, do not yet exist in time. Thus God cannot know the future.

2. Foreknowledge being impossible, God’s knowledge is contingent on future potentials. God must learn from actions of men that occur outside of His mind and independent of His will. God cannot know all things, His knowledge being dependent on the arbitrary and indeterminate choices of the libertarian will of man. Thus god is not omniscient.

3. God then is not sovereign in all spheres and therefore not sovereign at all as sovereignty is understood in the classical Christian sense. God is limited and no longer all powerful. This is not the Christian God who declares the end from the beginning or who works all things after the counsel of His will. This is a god who learns and reacts to events that occur in a creation that has an existence independent of Himself. This God is not omnipotent.

4. Since there are conditions that occur outside of Himself, conditions which of necessity cannot be known in advance, events which He must learn as they occur, God must react and change to adapt to these circumstances. This God is not immutable.

5. In order to keep creation moving towards his desired end, he must of necessity intercede at times and violate the indeterminate will of man. But this is the very will that is said to be inviolable in the soteriological act. This god is compromised and inconsistent. This god is arbitrary and capricious. This god is confused and contradictory.

6. This god, it is said, has died for all men for all time, knowing full well that His plan of salvation will not save all men. So while some men decry the determinate God of Calvinism, they are more than willing to accept a god who knows the future infallibly, knows his plan will be ineffective for the majority of mankind and institutes this plan anyway knowing full well that it’s result will be the death of most who have ever lived.

7. Free will adherents reject a God who determines all things. But they are willing to accept a god who knows all things and chooses to do nothing about them. This is, so they say, because the will of man is free. God knows full well that terrorists will fly a jet into the WTC and chooses to do nothing. He is capable of doing something but values the libertarian will of men above the eternal destiny of all those in the buildings and so chooses, by his refusal to intercede, to consign most of those inhabitants to eternal death. If I observe a crime and have the ability to do something to prevent it or know in advance of it’s occurrence and fail to notify the proper authorities I am as guilty as those that perpetrated the crime. This god is guilty of complicity. He is an accessory before the fact.

8. In the case of open theism, god didn’t know what he was doing or what He would get by doing it (sin, evil, murders, war, untold human suffering on a massive scale) yet was willing to take that chance. This is the god who risks, but exactly who and what were affected by this risk? To add to the conundrum god could not know if there was anything he would be able to do to correct the mess he created. And the open theist suggests that the god of Calvinism is cold hearted and despotic?

9. This god potentially died for no one. The atonement is universal in scope. God has not done anything more for one person than He has done for any other person and the one thing he has not done for those who are lost is to save them. Salvation is for everyone in general, but for no one in particular. This god is dependent and ineffective.

10. Libertarians tacitly reject total depravity. Man is not dead in sin but merely sick. He is inclined to do evil but is not in fact evil. Salvation is a potential that must be appropriated by the individual. Man cannot be wholly dead in sin and make this choice. The potential for good must be present. Man must overcome the inclination to reject God in order to accept the offer of the Gospel. Unfortunately, the Gospel itself, while evidently powerful enough to save those who choose to accept it, is impotent to convert the hearts of most of mankind. Free will theology suffers from its own type of particularism, but it’s an arbitrary particularism dependent on the condition of the individual. Salvation is “available” only for the ethically advantaged.

11. No wonder then that the evangel is often reduced to begging and pleading. God is not going to do anything but offer a potential. MAN is the decisive factor. Man is the determinative agent. We must convince man to make a positive decision for Christ. Better salespersons are more effective evangelists. Solus Christos is lost as salvation is synergistic. Arminianism stands on the same epistemological ground as atheism.”

Mark Chambers