Category: Uncategorized

This morning, on this Mother’s Day I want to open by just allowing the weight of Scripture press down upon us as it speaks to the glorious calling and nature of women.

I Peter 3:7 Husbands, likewise, dwell with them (your wives) with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

I Timothy 2:12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 15 Nevertheless she will be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.

I Timothy 5:14 Therefore I desire that the younger widows marry, bear children, manage the house, give no opportunity to the adversary to speak reproachfully.

Proverbs 31:27 She watches over the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.

Titus 2:3 the older women likewise … that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

I Corinthians 11:7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man is not from woman, but woman from man. 9 Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.

I Corinthians 14:35 And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.

Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

Psalm 68:12 “Kings of armies flee, they flee,
And she who remains at home divides the [a]spoil / plunder.

Isaiah 3:12 As for My people, children are their oppressors,
And women rule over them.
O My people! Those who lead you [a]cause you to err,
And destroy the way of your paths.”


What we see from this compendium of Scripture is that the prima facie evidence from Scripture is that women are different from men and as being different have a different role and calling then men.

We also would say that from this reading that when a social order is operating in a way that reflects Biblical priorities women have a unique relationship to the maintaining of the household to the glory of God. Scripture teaches, that God made women to be man’s Prime Minister in the Home. The Man is the King but the role of Prime Minister in domestic affairs is a position of honor and esteem.

Now, we immediately offer the caveat that when social orders are not operating in a fashion that reflects Biblical priorities it is often the case that women are pressed into responsibilities that should have been filled by men. Deborah is the prime example. Huldah, if your remember your Bible is another. Huldah was a prophetess but in an age of severe decline in Israel. She becomes key when she steps on the scene but one wonders if Israel had not been in decline if Huldah would have even been in that position.

So, what we are looking at this morning is the normative, all the while conceding we hardly live in a biblical normative social order and as such we might find all kinds of irregularities that we might support now that we otherwise wouldn’t support. For example, given the irregularity of our social order we might well prefer that a Biblical Christian women be elected for a particular political position vis-a-vis her opponent, a sodomite being elected. If things were normal, women would not be forced into positions where Scripture says they don’t belong, just as Deborah didn’t belong in charge of an Army.

When we press women into roles that men are by nature called to fill it is as if we have decided that the purpose for Roses is to serve as Kindling for fires or that our best bone China is to be used as a dog dish. When women serve in roles that is contrary to their God ordained nature and calling we are at that point abusing women and that is criminal.

The Scripture speaks with a uniform voice, as we heard, that a woman’s high responsibility and privilege is to fill the honorable role of wife and mother – supporter of the work of Her husband.

Gen. 2:18 Now the Lord God said, “It is not good (beneficial) for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper [one who balances him—a counterpart who is] suitable and complementary for him.”

Now invariably when we talk about the nature and role of women as help-meet and complimentary to her husbad, there will be some men who hear strange things.

They will hear things like “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” or they start humming the Stones, “Under my Thumb.” They become one part Ghengis Khan and one part my former Brother-in-law. However those types need to hear Rushdoony at this point,

“The Bible declares Sarah to be the model wife in her obedience and subjection (I Peter 3:1-7). We cannot understand the meaning of that without recognizing the fact that, on occasion, Sarah, confident in the godliness of her position, gave Abraham an ultimatum (Gen. 16:5; 21:9-13), and God declared, “in all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice” (Gen. 9:12), a sentence men rarely if ever use as a sermon text! “

So, the fact that women have a particular nature and role as wives and mothers as help-meets to men and as complimentary to men does not mean that she is inferior to men. It merely means that God has equipped her to excel in one way and domain while God has equipped men to excel in a different way and domain.

We see that we have a Charybdis and Scylla here. On one side is the danger of overbearing men treating their wives altogether as lesser beings. If you’ve ever seen this danger you pray God you can get away from it as fast as you can. It is an embarrassment to see and a tragedy to have to live with. On the other side is the danger of a women who are Shrews and who run their men. They may even become Governors in Mitten shaped states. If you’ve ever seen this foul state you begin to pray, “And deliver us from the Evil One.”

The Scripture forbids both the Charybdis and the Scylla providing us a patriarchal paradigm that honors men as men and women as women resulting in a harmony of interests in the home that is promissory of God being honored, adults being happy, and children growing up well adjusted.

The Scriptures teach that the biblical call for Patriarchy can’t exist without faithful women who are delighted with their callings as Prime Ministers in the home. But of course we have long lived in a Church wherein women have revolted from this place of honor and wherein men have encouraged them to cast aside their God honoring privileges.

Let’s take a few examples,

Aimee Byrd is a member of a Reformed Church and has been pushing to overthrow Biblical Patriarchy for years now.

The easiest way to prove her feminism is simply to read her blog.  She complains that women don’t write more theology and aren’t encouraged in higher theological learning, and wonders why “all the women publishing good academic works are egalitarian.”  She promotes the writings of egalitarians. She criticizes the Nashville Statement on human sexuality for being to conservative when in point of fact the Statement is too progressive. She warns of the perils that attend teaching abstinence from premarital sex. She praises an author for denying that Scripture is “a hopelessly patriarchal construction” and for explaining the “gynocentric interruption of the dominant androcentricity of Scripture.”

Another “Reformed” woman is who is seeking to tear down Biblical Patriarchy is Rachel Miller. She has a book out that says it all, “Beyond Authority and Submission.”

The third woman is Valerie Hobbs. She was previously a fellow at the Greystone Theological Institute, working alongside noted Reformed ministers and professors. A senior lecturer in applied linguistics, one of her pet projects has been researching the treatment of women in conservative Reformed churches as seen in her numerous journal articles The articles reveal her animus against the teaching of Reformed churches about women. Her popular level articles reflect the same animus.

There are countless men as well. Ministers Todd Bordow, Carl Truman, Todd Pruitt likewise push the egalitarian feminist agenda. However for our purpose this morning let’s consider,

Michael Rea is Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, renown Roman Catholic Institution could write several years ago,

The love of a mother is no more or less important than the love of a father. We all know this. But then, in general, mothers should be under no greater burden than fathers to abandon their callings for the sake of their children. The asymmetry in our responses to working mothers and fathers, then, suggests that other factors are in play. In an evangelical Protestant context, the context I have in view here, there is good reason to suspect that these other factors include a tendency to devalue the gifts and contributions of women particularly in positions of teaching and leadership.”

Why, instead of the conclusion that Rea draws in his last sentence above, don’t we conclude that the reason Evangelical Protestants don’t want women in social order leadership is,

1.) The Scriptures forbid it as we saw at the outset. Scripture clearly envisions the women as the Prime Minister of the Home advancing her Husband King’s dominion.

2.) We so value women and their role in hearth and home that we don’t want to treat them like fine family silver used to dig for worms by exiling women from hearth and home in order to embrace the curse of men to till the ground by the sweat of their brow.

Overall I would say it is Dr. Rea, and people like him, who are devaluing the gifts and contributions of women. It is people like Rea who are taking from children their Mothers and Mothers from their children. It is men like Dr. Rea who are suggesting that somehow women are missing out by being the leaders and teachers of the most impressionable in our social order.

The hidden goal of feminism, as a created tool of the NWO, since feminism’s rise at the turn of the 20th century and its acceleration in the 60’s and 70’s was to destroy the family. By engendering discontent in women with the home and so getting women out of the home and into the workforce (i.e. — Rosie the Riveter) via the NWO’s instigation of WW I and especially WW II multiple ends were served, one of which was getting women out from under their husband’s authority and another was separating Mothers from their children — their instinctual impulse.

In such a way two things happened. First, children would more naturally become defacto wards of the state (from daycare to Government schools) as two income families increasingly predominated across the landscape of America. Second, women would become less dependent upon their husbands and so have the resources to leave at the smallest provocation. In all this the family would become more destabilized and the State would expand in power where the family decreased in power. Feminism serves the end of the rapacious state. Indeed, it might be well said that state legislation that supports feminism is a case where the State is raping women. For those women who support feminist legislation one might rightfully say that, metaphorically speaking, “those women enjoy rape.”

So, it is in the interest of the tyrant State to breathe life into feminism because by doing so the tyrant State breaks down a potential adversary insuring that the family, as a potential alternate power center does not arise to challenge the tyrant State. This explains why the we have gone from the Trustee family model in the West to the Trustee family model and now ever increasingly to the Atomistic family style. The elimination of the family is life for the tyrant state.

The tyrant state does not want a Christian home where wives and mothers as homemakers are paid and amply taken care of and provided for by a loving Christian husband. Unless there were extenuating circumstances, why should a Christian wife and mother want to work for a different covenant head in the workforce when she can take care of her covenant head and family at home?

I have no doubt that situations will arise where women have to work outside of the home in addition to their work as caring and nurturing wives and mothers in the home.

I have no doubt that situations will arise where women have to work outside of the home in addition to their work as caring and nurturing wives and mothers in the home. Further, I am convinced where women can do the same work as men they should be paid commensurate with their work.

Having said that, and having worked for the Airlines industry for 15 years I know for a fact that in many career occupations that require strength, women, on the whole, (again exceptions probably exist) can not do the work that a man can do and so shouldn’t be paid what a man is paid.

Men are not women and women are not men and to say that they automatically should be paid equally reinforces the egalitarian agenda.

Now, there are industries where women should might well be paid more than men. Nursing, for example, were predominated by women early on and this because women were seen as natural nurturers and caretakers.

Having conceded that, the best and safest place for a woman is in the home. Women being forced outside the home are being cheated.

There was a time when this kind of thinking was not controversial in the least and was embraced, above all, by women.

“No system of philosophy has ever yet worked out in behalf of woman the practical results for good which Christianity has conferred on her. Christianity has raised woman from slavery and made her the thoughtful companion of man; finds her the mere toy, or the victim of his passions, and it places her by his side, his truest friend, his most faithful counselor, his helpmeet in every worthy and honorable task. It protects her far more effectually than any other system. It cultivates, strengthens, elevates, purifies all her highest endowments, and holds out to her aspirations the most sublime for that future state of existence, where precious rewards are promised to every faithful discharge of duty, even the most humble. But, while conferring on her these priceless blessings, it also enjoins the submission of the wife to the husband, and allots a subordinate position to the whole sex while here on earth. No woman calling herself a Christian, acknowledging her duties as such, can, therefore, consistently deny the obligation of a limited subordination laid upon her by her Lord and His Church.”

Susan Fenimore Cooper

Conclusion

Unless God is pleased to give us Reformation, and that right quickly, future sane generations will look back at our current dementia and with the benefit of sanctified hindsight will see our time as the apex of lunacy wherein warfare against God’s design of human nature was waged with full fury and intent.

They will trace how the lunacy began stirring in the Anabaptist Radical Reformation and in the murkier depths of the Renaissance. From there with Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelly as accompanied by the likes of the Marquis de Sade and Charles Fourier they will trace how the Enlightenment vomited up Feminism as a continuing theme… a theme then taken up by the French and Russian Revolutions which heaved up the likes of the Marquis de Condorcet and Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai… they will trace a theme which finally triumphed here with the aid of WW I and WW II.

A future sanctified generation will look back at our times and identify what the modern Conservative Church cannot see today and that is late stage Cancer feminism and egalitarianism finally expressed itself just before the death of the blood and family patient with the tumors of same-sex marriage and gender confusion. If God is pleased later generations will draw a line connecting the Cancer’s earlier manifestations of legalizing birth control, easy divorce, women in the work-force and deadbeat Fathers.

And perhaps a future sanctified generation will promise by God’s grace alone,

“NEVER AGAIN.”

Before getting into this next installment wherein we disembowel R2K and Dr. David Van Drunen we want to make sure that the readers have the link so that they can listen for themselves the kind of ideas that are being advocated under the banner of Christ and His Kingdom.

https://www.wscal.edu/resource-center/politics-after-christendom

“The only thing I can do is to say to the people read my Biblical-Theological argument and if you have criticisms of that then make them on Biblical-Theological grounds. I mean I recognize we are all affected by our cultural context. We are all affected by certain biases we have and so yeah, there is always a danger that each one of us have to look out for that we try to make arguments that support positions that we want to hold. for other reasons. I have tried my best to make a kind of new Biblical-theological argument for why there needs to be a generous measure of tolerance and religious liberty and I am happy to hear back from other people who want to engage that argument seriously. So, that is what I would like to hear from others. It seems to me that to simply say, ‘Well you’re capitulating to modernity,’ — Well, prove it by showing flaws in my argument. You know, I’m not trying to be cocky when I say that, I’m just saying that I’ve tried to make a rigorous argument and so I hope people will deal with it on its own terms.

I would say, and this is the way my book presents things; God established in the covenant with Noah this idea that political communities are to be common communities in which believers and unbelievers live together in some measure of peace and order and when God entered into covenant with Israel at Sinai and brought them into the promised land that was … a kind of parenthesis. This was an unusual situation Now we recognize that a big chunk of the Bible is talking about life in this situation and so I think that might distort the way we think about things a little bit but I think there are all sorts of evidence in Scripture that the way things operated in the promised land under the law of Moses for the old covenant Israel was very specific for old covenant Israel. As we were talking earlier, I Peter comes along and says your ‘exiles’ and ‘sojourners’ it is actually point us to ways of living that are different in important respects from way Israel in the Promised Land experienced. So, the way I would see it is that for us under the new covenant in a number of important respects our lives are are more like the sojourning Abraham, more like Israel under exile than Israel in the promised land in which, granted there was not anything like religious liberty in the way we know in which there was a God ordained politically confessionally unified society.

Dr. David Van Drunnen (DVD)
Politics after Christendom
Interview w/ Dr. R. Scott Clark
Office Hours program

1.) In these responses, DVD, we have looked at your Biblical-Theological grounds. Mene mene tekel upharsin. We have shown the flaws. We have overturned the idea that there is anything rigorous about what you have done.

2.) DVD says something quite profound here as it pertains to biases. We have to keep in mind that the eschatology of DVD is a rabid Amillennialism. R2K is what it is because of its strenuous Amillennial character. What DVD has done with R2K is he has taken his negative expectations of future Kingdom development and progress and he has reasoned backwards from those negative expectations so as to develop a system (R2K) that insures the negative outcome that the man is theologically wedded. Being rabidly Amillennial DVD has contrived a reversed engineered system that guarantees that the pessimistic anticipations that Amillennialism teaches comes to pass.

3.) Notice the bold print. This is another key admission. Forever, R2K has flip-flopped on the issue of whether their version of “Christianity” is the faith once and forever delivered unto the saints or something completely innovative that no Christian has ever seen before. Here, in the bold print, we have admission from one of the key architects of R2K that what he has done is completely innovative. No Christian who has ever lived as ever seen what DVD has done with R2K. I find this beyond significant.

4.) In previous entries we have demonstrated that tolerance and religious pluralism is a myth. In any political community there is always a reigning religion. That is an inescapable reality.

5.) The whole notion of a Mosaic parenthesis is troubling because it yields a Marcionite theology where God changes. God deals with man one way in the Old Testament but in the New Testament He has different expectations. In the Old Testament God required His people to cast out the leaven in their political communities but in the New Testament God requires His people to allow the leaven to continue to spread in their political communities. What DVD gives us here is that Jesus died on the cross, in part ,so that men would become religiously tolerant in their political communities and so that men no longer had to walk in terms of God’s revelational law in the common realm.

6.) Note the appeal to dispensationalize large chunks of the Old Testament.

For DVD’s appeal again to “living as exiles and sojourners, per I Peter, see previous installments of this response.


“For one thing, I think it is important for us to remember as Christians that supporting some generous measure of religious toleration and liberty is good for us as Christians as we seek to evangelize the world. We don’t really have a vested interest in having political communities that are religiously intolerant because we are a missionary religion calling for people to leave their old faiths and to come and to join us in the Church of Jesus Christ. So, I do think there is something pretty powerful to be said that the more we appreciate the missionary character of of the Christian religion the more friendly we should be to a kind of religious tolerance in our broader societies. So, I think, on the one hand we as Christians — we as Churches — want to be zealous evangelistically. So that is part of our perspective. At the same time it seems to me as we think about our political responsibilities I think we need to make a distinction between those responsibilities and our call to evangelize. There are times we have to talk to our unbelieving neighbors about practical problems — challenges that we share in common — and how is that we can have conversations with them? How can we try to work through a property dispute? How can we work through a two lane or a four lane road? As well as more weighty questions of law and politics. How can we do that even as we recognize that we disagree about some fundamentally important questions about God, the world and human beings?

The last chapter I reflect on the liberal and conservative traditions. I think it is really important to remember that people use the terms “liberal” and “conservative” sometimes in very different ways and I discuss this in this (final) chapter (in my book). I try to offer what I mean by liberal and conservative. By the ‘Liberal’ tradition, I’m essentially getting at this idea that all political communities are made up of people with different worldviews or theologies or whatever term you want to use. and that we are called in some way to live together. To find ways to have a political polity without forcing our neighbors to convert to think like us about these most important things. By the ‘conservative’ tradition I am getting at the idea that we ought to have a kind of respect for our traditions. We have learned things over time and we have gained a certain knowledge of the importance of certain institutions like family for example. What I suggest is that we can become kind of comfortable with a conservative liberalism. A liberalism not in the sense of left wing progressive politics. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about a liberalism that is content to live in communities in which we try to live in peace with all sorts of different people. It is a conservative liberalism in the sense that it respects traditional institutions. It respects the wisdom of the ages. I hope that gives just a little bit of enticement by saying that conservatism and liberalism both have some aspect of of the truth. I hope that can bring some type of perspective on these things that readers haven’t thought about.”

Dr. David Van Drunnen (DVD)
Politics after Christendom
Interview w/ Dr. R. Scott Clark
Office Hours program

1.) I have no idea why religious tolerance helps in our missionary efforts. I would think that a Christian political community would be the very essence of positive missionary efforts for newcomers to that political community.

Secondly, I think all the evidence is in that we need that our religious tolerance has most certainly not helped our missionary efforts. In point of fact just the opposite has occurred. It is the Christian community, because of Religious tolerance whom has become the target for missionary success. All the statistics are saying that we are becoming, with each half-generation, an increasingly pagan people. This, no doubt, is in large part due to our religious tolerance. The pagans have successfully evangelized Christians to their faith(s) because they were given the room to do so via religious tolerance. On the other hand think how successful the Christian missionary Boniface was with religious intolerance, in the 8^th century, as he wielded the mighty ax which hewed down the sacred oak and who then used the oak to build a Christian chapel dedicated to St. Peter. Fortunately, for the Germanic pagans, St. Boniface had never heard of R2K or religious tolerance.

Note also that DVD is demanding his own version of intolerance. DVD is intolerant of Christians who won’t refuse to embrace his teaching of tolerance. You know that if DVD could, he would make it so every Christian who is intolerant of his call for tolerance would be removed from our political community so that the work of evangelizing all those pagans via a mighty tolerance could be achieved. DVD is all about tolerance until he is faced with people who will not tolerate his views. Maybe if DVD just prays harder all of us non-tolerant non R2K people will convert to R2K.

2.) Honestly, DVD’s bringing up property disputes and four or two lane highways is a red herring. Nobody thinks that one has to have confessional unity in a political community in order to deal with those issues. However, whether or not to build Minarets so that the Muezzin’s can issue the Islamic call to prayer or whether to require special Muslim chapels in airports, or whether Sharia in Dearborn Michigan can supersede all other law, now these are issues that begin to get us closer to the damage that a R2K belief system will do if given its head. (And it has already been given its head.) The fact is that no political community can survive the balkanization that comes with have a pluralism of gods in the public square and if Christians thing that tolerance is the answer to the problem of the plurality of Gods then Christians and Christianity will be the faith that is snuffed out.

4.) All I see in DVD’s blather about Conservative vs. Liberal is the Marxist Hegelian dialectic. Thesis (Conservatism), Anti-thesis (Liberalism), Synthesis (DVD’s Utopia).

5.) The idea that one can define liberal as those” content to live in communities in which we try to live in peace with all sorts of different people,” is a howler if there ever was one. Did DVD never read any 20^th century history while he was getting his Jesuit endorsed Ph.D? The very definition of Liberal is someone who is not content to live in peace with all sorts of people. Ask the Kulaks in the Ukraine how well the Bolsheviks lived in peace with all sorts of different people. Ask the Chinese how well Mao’s Communist hordes lived in peace with all sorts of different people. Ask the French Catholic Church how well Robespierre, Marat, and Danton lived in peace with all sorts of different people. Ask the Spanish Nationalist during the Spanish Civil war how well the Rojos lived in peace with the Nationalists.

Honestly, this is really what turns my temperature up when it comes to R2K. It’s as if these people know nothing about history and how their proposed theories are going to get Christians and others killed. It is a shorter distance between the kind of political and religious tolerance these people advocate and Madame Guillotine then these people realize. Tolerance is merely the stage for Christ haters between seeking to gain the ascendancy in a political community and actually achieving that ascendancy in the political community. One can be sure that once the Christ haters reach that ascendancy they will be pulling up the ladder of tolerance so no one can replace them.

6.) Liberalism has zero aspects of truth.

With that I am finished. I can only pray (and I do pray) that Christians will see in R2K the certain apostasy that is contained therein. I do not doubt that many of these people have fine intentions but as the maxim goes, “good intentions pave the road to hell.” These people, intentionally or unintentionally, are a blight on the Church and are the guarantors that Biblical Christianity will go into abeyance if they are ever to gain the ascendancy.

I am convinced that in the Reformed world they are close to gaining the ascendancy.

____

“One of the things that was important to me in developing some of the arguments in my book was in I Peter 2 when he calls us, as Christians, ‘sojourners and exiles,’ and I think that is really fascinating because when you hear those terms you’re supposed to think back to the Old Testament. Sojourners; you think about Abraham and his family — they were sojourners in the world. Abraham was not living in a confessionally Christians — or whatever you would call it at that time –sort of society. And then ‘Exiles;’ that makes us think of the Babylonian exile in which the Israelites were taken out of their land and living in a land controlled by pagans and So, in both instances Abraham and later the Israelite exiles had to live in common with their unbelieving neighbors and try to find their way and live godly lives in that context. So very fascinating that Peter would say to us as New Testament Christians, ‘this is actually what you are like — this is what your experience is like in this world and I think that is a very different way of thinking about things than saying ‘you are called to be creating a kind of Christendom in which actually you are not so much a sojourner or you’re not really an exile, you’re in charge this is your society. That’s not what we are called to do it seems….’

Most Reformed Christians today, in one way or another, reject certain aspects of the way the early Reformed thinkers thought about society. You know what we would think of and what we would actually value as say the 1st amendment paradigm in the united States is something that our Reformed forefathers would not have accepted. They would not have believed in the ‘freedom of religion’ in the way we would think of it. They would envision civil government that would affirm the one true faith as they understood it and believed that government officials had responsibilities to be suppressing heresies and blasphemies and non-Christian religions and so I’m thankful that, say your church, the United Reformed Churches and my church the Orthodox Presbyterian Churches I mean we’ve actually revised our confessional documents to reflect these things. We haven’t done that with the vast majority of our confessional statements. We affirmed the basic theology still today but this is something we have re-thought and I think it has been helpful for us to re-think these things. We always have said as Reformed Christians that the Scriptures are inspired, inerrant, and infallible but our own theology is not and that just as in the 16th century we had to reform the theology of the Medieval Church we may not have gotten a 100% of things right at that time and I think this is just an area where we just have to be honest and say that ‘we made mistakes here,’ and I think it is proper for us in all humility to recognize that we are Christians on the way and we sometimes don’t get things right. and I think it is better for us just to acknowledge if we in the Reformed tradition didn’t get something exactly right and if we need to repent and to do better, so be it. But I would say the idea the idea that the civil magistrate has to in some way enforce and support the true Church, it’s not a fundamental doctrine that changes the way we think of the atonement or the way we think of the sacraments or the way we think of our ordo salutis. We can think ‘Church-State’ relations without touching all those other important areas of Reformed theology.


Dr. David Van Drunnen (DVD)
Politics after Christendom
Interview w/ Dr. R. Scott Clark
Office Hours program

A brief preface to this entry. Some may wonder why I spend all this effort in disemboweling DVD and R2K. The answer is that this is personal to me. I have a child who is in a R2K church and this child will periodically report to me what she is hearing from the pulpit. Now, my child is not going to be fooled by all this skubala but my heart breaks for how this doctrine of demons is affecting the congregation in which my child sits. Because of my love for Christ and His doctrine I continue to play Don Quixote tilting at R2K windmills for His glory and for love of His people across the West.

1.) DVD attempts to take two metaphors that Peter uses in addressing 1^st century Christians and absolutize those metaphors as the only metaphors that Christians should own for their relation to the times in which they are living. Of course the Scripture uses other metaphors for our lives. Scriptures tells us that we are “more than conquerors.” Scripture tells us that Christians are Christ’s body over which he is the head. Scripture tells us that Christians are seated with Christ (a picture of ruling) in the heavenly places. Scripture tells us that Christians are confessors. The Heidelberg catechism, following the Scripture speaks of Christians as being prophets, priests, and kings. As one can see from this list of metaphors we should be careful not to absolutize any one or two metaphors so that they eliminate the impact of the other metaphors.

2.) God gave Israel revelation through the prophets to settle in Babylon as exiles. God has not given us revelation that we are to settle in our various communities as exiles. God has not given us revelation that we are to be always ruled by anti-Christ magistrates and that we should be good with that. Indeed when we look at Acts 19 and Paul’s effect on the community in Ephesus we see a political community troubled by the Christians who are not leaving the pagans alone. The economic structure of the Ephesus community is threatened by the Christians. The theological structures of the Ephesus community is threatened by the Christians. Indeed the whole law and order structure of the Ephesus political community is threatened there in Acts 19 and the pagans didn’t like it. When one reads Acts 19 it doesn’t look like the Christians in Ephesus are being strangers and exiles the way DVD is “teaching.”

3.) DVD says explicitly that Christians are not to be in charge and implies that Christians are not to have their own society. Now when this man says these kinds of things all that is left is to conclude that he is “teaching” that those Christians who do believe in Christendom and who do desire to exercise godly rule as magistrates under Christ’s authority are in sin. If Scripture teaches we are to be exiles and sojourners as DVD “teaches” then what else can it be but sin to say the contrary? We need to be very clear about this. Those of us who disagree with DVD do believe he is in sin for teaching these things and we should understand that he and those of his stripe do believe that those of us who disagree with him are likewise in sin and so displeasing God. There can be no tertium quid here between R2K and Biblical Christianity. Either R2K is pleasing to God or Biblical Christianity is pleasing to God. Either we are to be exiles and sojourners or we are to be ruling or seeking to rule as under Christ’s authority.

4.) DVD tells us that our Reformed forefathers would not have accepted the Liberal worldview where putatively pluralism reigns. Someone who would have accepted this though is the Anabaptist Roger Williams. It really is the case that DVD is pushing the Reformed Church to take Roger Williams and his Rhode Island project as a Reformed saint. Who could have ever guessed that the Reformed world would canonize Roger Williams? The Puritans are spinning in their graves. Indeed, with the idea that Reformed theology should provide the underpinning of the Liberal Worldview we find the Anabaptistification of the Reformed faith.

5.) I wonder if DVD realizes that the 1^st amendment as originally constructed protected the States in their decisions to be Erastian as it pertained to their colonies? The 1^st amendment was never intended as originally crafted to turn the whole political community into Rhode Island. The 1^st amendment meant as originally crafted meant that the FEDS could not dictate to the States what would be each State’s denominational expression of Christianity. Still, having said that I am convinced that the 1788 American Revision of the WCF was a significant error.

6.) Let us be clear that to accept what is now understood as the 1^st amendment paradigm of freedom of religion is a myth. As I have already argued in this response to DVD, the idea of freedom of religion is a myth that supports the myth of pluralism. The idea of freedom of religion and pluralism is that we invite all the gods into the public square and in that way all the adherents of the different religions can be assuaged. The problem with this reading is that there has to be some mechanism whereby the competing gods can find their limits when they conflict in the political community. In pluralism that mechanism is the State and as such the State becomes the God over the competing gods and is in fact the ruling God over all the gods and the State is thus seen as the one true God in the putatively pluralistic political community. So, we see freedom of religion is a myth and of course the implication of this is that multiculturalism is a myth. The Anabaptist and Liberal Worldview has failed and all the R2K Humpty Dumpties won’t be able to put it back together.

7.) This leads us to say that we still live in a social order where the civil government affirms the one true faith as they understand it. (Just not the Christian faith.) We still live in a time where government officials have the responsibility to be suppressing heresies and blasphemies that are contrary to pluralism and multiculturalism – so called. And what are those heresies and blasphemies? Why, most routinely the heretics are Christians who say that “pluralism is a myth” or that “Christianity should legally be in ascendancy over all other religions.”

8.) The changing of the confessions (1788 WCF and then in the 20^th century the BCF) did indeed alter the Reformed faith to be something that wasn’t Reformed. What these alterations did was to reduce the Christian faith to be a personal and individual faith. These alterations took the corporate and social-covenantal stuffing out of the Christian faith. These alterations allowed the social order backdrop scenery of our Christian political communities to be changed out so that new social order backdrop scenery could be erected and that had the effect of re-orienting the personal-individual to create a Christianity that was consistent with the new corporate and social-covenantal and alien religion backdrop scenery. Like the chameleon who fades into whatever background that he is pressed up against, the changing of the social-order covenantal backdrop led incrementally to changes in the Christianity of the individual. DVD, and R. Scott Clark (the host and interviewer of “the Office Hours) are just flat out in error when they say that changing the confessions here didn’t effect the Reformed faith. Indeed, this change eventually destroyed the Reformed faith. We should have listened to the Father’s here.

9.) Now it may be the case that short term changing the Confessions in the area of Church and State didn’t immediately effect our understanding of the Atonement, or the sacraments or the ordo-salutis the change did over time dilute our understandings of those doctrines if only because with the new social-covenantal backdrop very few people cared. Secondly, as all political communities will have a doctrine of the Atonement a political community that does not have a Christian doctrine of the atonement (answering the question of how to get rid of sin and guilt) will adopt non Christian doctrines of the atonement. So, for example, in our social order we seek to get rid of our sin and guilt by placing all our sin and guilt on the rich, or the poor, or the minority, or oppressive Whitey. All of these are attempts of our social order to provide atonements since we no longer accept, as a social order, the atonement as found in Jesus Christ.

Clark and DVD (and W.Cal) are not thinking through the implications of having changed out our historic Reformed doctrine of Church and State and the consequence is our current pandemic in the modern Church

Recently I have seen a couple films that reinforces the narrative that Hollywood keeps spitting out the same movies only as cast in different genres. The great lion’s share of what Hollywood produces emphasizes how stupid or evil white people are. It is such a trope that you realize that every film is the same as the previous film that you viewed.

The first film I caught was “Django Unchained.” Here you find the typical tired bromides that White Southerners were evil and that blacks experienced the worst possible form of slavery. The only White person who comes across as “admirable” is a bounty hunter who is vicious in his murderous tactics in hunting down and killing those for whom he has a bounty. The only kindness our White Bounty Hunter has is for a black slave he frees in hopes of that slave being able to point out three brothers upon whom he has bounties. Over time however, the White Bounty Hunter takes a shine to the black slave and after they together murder the just mentioned three brothers the White Bounty Heart decides to make the now former black slave his Bounty Hunter protege. The White Bounty Hunter does this because he is smitten with how madly in love his slave is with his long lost German speaking black wife. We see here that the black slave is virtuous because of his deep love that will do anything (as we shall see) for his long separated wife.

The film progress with White people teaching the former slave how to use assorted firearms. The two Bounty Hunters gun down and murder countless numbers of white people. This was such a theme that Jamie Fox, who played Django — the freed slave turned bounty hunter — boasted in a Saturday Night Live appearance that “the movie was great, I get to kill all the white people.” Django becomes the modern Negro male beau ideal inasmuch as he finds his identity if murdering white people.

As mentioned earlier, all the white people in the film, save Dr. King Schultz (Bounty Hunter) are repulsive and wicked. The worst of them all is “Calvin Candie,” a plantation owner in Mississippi who owns Django’s wife. Of course, it is not accidental that the most wicked white man of them all is named “Calvin.” The film writers arrange it so that when Calvin is murdered the impulse is to cheer Dr. King Schultz.

One oddity in this film is that there is one black character in the film who is cast as being evil. However, this is not accidental because this black character (played by Samuel L. Jackson) is cast as a complete Uncle Tom who is the house Negro for the Calvin Candie plantation. Django murders this Uncle Tom to every viewer’s relief.

The film ends with every white person being dead (including Dr. King Schultz), the plantation manor dynamited and with Django having regained his long lost wife they ride off into the night.

One theme that comes through in the film is how much Whites hate uppity Negroes. Whites can’t believe that Django rides his own horse. Uncle Tom, the House Negro, can’t believe that Django is going to sleep in the Big House and eat with the White Folks at the White Folks table. Whites can’t believe that Django is dressed like a cowboy. Whites can’t believe that Django talks all uppity to Whites. Clearly we are to believe from the film that Whites expect of Blacks that they know their place.

In the Stephen King film, “The Green Mile,” we have much the same film only in a different genre. All the White people are evil or stupid or have to be enlightened by the “magic negro” in the film.

This film is cast in the context of a death row called “the Green Mile.” On death row in Louisiana are two white guys (one of whom is particularly demented and wicked), one American Indian, and one giant of a Black man named John Coffey. All are guilty of their crimes except the giant of a Black Man — John Coffey. Coffey, as we learn as the film unfolds is a gentle soul who was wrongly arrested and convicted for the rape and murder of two little white girl sisters — and this even though it was really the case that Coffey was seeking to heal them of their wounds. Keeping watch over the inmates are five guards. One (Percy) is particularly evil while the other four are simpletons who must be educated in goodness by the Black John Coffey.

The other two main characters are the White Warden and his wife. The wife is dying of a brain cancer.

In the course of the film we are constantly reminded of how gentle, wise, and supernaturally gifted John Coffey is. Coffey has the gift of the shine and of healing. Coffey knows what people are thinking and what they have done merely by touching them or by being in close proximity to them. Coffey also has a magic healing touch that comes to the fore several times in the film. Coffey is the very epitome of the “Magic Negro.”

As the film unfolds we learn how noble John Coffey is because he goes willingly to his death in the electric chair because he can no longer stand living in such a painful mean spirited world. (Now keep in mind all this pain and mean spirited-ness comes in the context of all his interaction with White people. He tried to supernaturally heal the two raped and murdered little girls (raped and murdered by one of the white inmates on death row [Green Mile] we learn in the film) but instead was treated like filth. He watched as Percy (the wicked guard) abuses the other prisoners. He sees one of the White inmates hurt his prison guard friends. White people have caused him all his pain so he is glad to leave this world in the electric chair.

As mentioned earlier Coffey heals the Warden’s wife of brain cancer. There was a very sexually suggestive scene in the film in the scene where Coffey heals the Warden’s wife. In that scene Coffey holds the Warden’s wife in his arm while he presses his lips against the Warden’s wife’s lips in order to suck the cancer out of her brain. The scene only last a few seconds but it clearly gives the flavor of some kind of miscegenation.

In both films the white people are evil, stupid, or simpletons. In both films the main characters are black who rise above the world, either by killing all the competition (Django Unchained) or by leaving the world (The Green Mile). In both films the theme of the movie is the inferiority of white people and the superiority of black people. In both films the audience is moved to identify with the black people and to loathe the white people. The message in both films is that it sucks to be a White person.

However, as said earlier, anymore these are the themes of every movie made by Hollywood.

“One thing that can be encouraging for us today is that the New Testament prepares us for living in the kind of world we find ourselves. The New Testament doesn’t prepare us for living in Christendom. The New Testament addresses a world in which believers are a small minority. It addresses a world in which Christians don’t have any illusions about being in charge of things. Christians are trying to do their best to live at peace with all men as far at it lies with them and yet also to recognize the legitimate authority of civil government and I think as we try to do a Biblical political theology there are all sorts of resources for us to live in the kind of world in which we find ourselves….

Does God wish us to strive for a unified Christian society in which civil government and economic institutions and everything else are united by a common confession of Christ? Now of course we all agree I hope in the proclamation of the Gospel we want as many people as the Spirit is pleased to convert to turn to Christ — of course that is not the question. I think the question is, do we believe that God has called our political communities as such to be those which are confessionally Christian. My argument is ‘no.’ A big part of my argument is to say, ‘actually our political communities are covenantally grounded’ and that is something that should resonate with Reformed people because we pay a lot of attention to the Biblical covenants in Scripture. My argument specifically is that our political communities are grounded in the covenant with Noah after the great flood. There God covenanted with the entire world — including all human beings — so not just with believers, not just with those who profess the name of Christ but with all human beings and God called all human beings to live together in a common community in which they are called to do justice You remember in the Noahic covenant (Gen. 9:6), ‘Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed,’ that’s a general call for justice and that is given to the entire human race and that Noahic covenant is still in effect today. That covenant is in effect til Christ comes again … My basic argument is that because God has ordained political communities to grow out of this covenant with Noah that we are to respect the commonality of our political communities. In other words, that these are communities that are supposed to bring together in some kind of common life — both those who profess Christ and those who don’t.”

Dr. David Van Drunnen (DVD)
Politics after Christendom
Interview w/ Dr. R. Scott Clark
Office Hours program

1.) Three times in the first three sentences DVD makes reference to the New Testament. In his constant return to this phrase it seems the expectation that DVD is pushing for is that Christians today would be “New Testament” Christians. Now, that phraseology, and DVD’s usage of “New Testament” in the first three sentences above has a distinctly Dispensational flavor to it. This type of thing is just one reason for why many have observed that R2K is Reformed Dispensationalism.

2.) DVD’s constant complaint is against the idea of repristinating Christendom and yet we hear DVD seemingly desiring to repristinate the conditions of the New Testament when the Scripture was written. Yet, there is not one word in the New Testament that we are required to maintain their level of paganism as it existed during the 1^st century AD. The fact that God’s New Testament Revelation and inscripturation came into a pagan culture and climate is no argument that God desires Christians to live in pagan cultures and climate. It is not even an argument that we should expect, as Christians to live in political communities that are not decidedly Christian.

3.) All because the New Testament addresses “a world in which believers are a small minority” doesn’t mean God’s intent was that the world would forever find believers being a small minority in political communities.

4.) DVD offers that the New Testament doesn’t prepare us for living in Christendom thus suggesting that therefore living in Christendom is not intended by the New Testament. By this reasoning we could just as easily say that “the New Testament doesn’t prepare us for living in the 21^st century therefore living in the 21^st century is not intended by the New Testament,” or “the New Testament doesn’t prepare us for living anywhere except the Mediterranean world therefore living elsewhere but the Mediterranean world is not intended by the New Testament.” It is a significant non-sequitur on DVD’s part.

5.) Living at peace with all men does not mean compromising on Biblical Christianity so that the pagans who hate Biblical Christianity will be satisfied with our presence. It is easy to live at peace with all men if we just jettison the core of Biblical Christianity in our political communities. In my estimation DVD is doing with this passage (Romans 12:18) what he does with so much Scripture; he is making it walk on all fours.

6.) As Christians we are certainly to “to recognize the legitimate authority of civil government,” while at same time insisting that if civil authority desires to be taken as legitimate then it has the requirement laid on it to rule consistent with God’s definition of justice. Here, in these united States, if any civil Government wants to be recognized as having legitimate authority they must rule consistent with their political covenant documents (Federal and State Constitutions). If they fail in that as characterized by a long train of abuses they have surrendered all expectation from both Christian or non-Christian to be recognized as having legitimate authority. The authority of civil-government is not absolute and is not to be recognized as legitimate when it becomes illegitimate.

7.) If we believe that there is no such thing as neutrality, then it is inescapable that if we are not striving for a unified Christian society bonded by a common confession of Christ then all that is left is striving for a society that is unified by some other God and Faith reflecting a common confession of some pagan deity. After all, “he who does not gather with Christ, scatters.”

As I noted in part 1 it is not possible to live in a political community that is not unified by one particular God and one particular faith. Pluralism is a myth. Multiculturalism likewise is a myth. They are both concocted so as to blind us from the reality that one God and one Faith is animating and controlling the political community. If we won’t strive for a unified Christian society we will, even if only by default, strive for a unified non-Christian political community and society. We cannot serve two Masters. We cannot serve Christ in our private individual lives and our Church lives and not serve Christ in the public square (common realm).

8.) Also at this point in the interview DVD returns to a central theme in his “theology” and that is his insistence that the Noahic covenant provides the cornerstone to his political-theology R2K project. This position has, in the past, been challenged repeatedly. DVD however can not give this position up because it is the lynch pin of his innovative system. The Noahic covenant was not a redemptive covenant and so must be common. This position allows DVD to pivot to say that the Noahic covenant is the covenant that all mankind operates and functions in during their lifetime when those who are believers are not operating and functioning within the Church. One implication of this for DVD and R2K is that the Church and the Kingdom are identified as exact synonyms. There is nothing outside the Church realm as existing in the public square that is an expression of the Kingdom of God. Everything outside the church realm as existing in the public square is a common realm relating back to the common Noahic covenant. The common Noahic covenant teaches us that there is no such thing as Christian politics, Christian economics, Christian Education, Christian family, etc. since all these function within the common Noahic covenant and not as ancillaries to the Kingdom of God.

That DVD is in error regarding his assertion that the Noahic covenant “doesn’t make any promises of Redemption,” can be seen inasmuch as the Noahic covenant is in point of fact highly redemptive, both in looking back to creation and looking forward to Christ.

First one finds the flood being presented in similar terms as the chaos of Gen. 1:2, and the ark’s landing on dry land and Noah’s commission by God to be fruitful and multiply both echo the original creation narrative. The rescue of Noah was a Redemptive rescue and this is hinted at when Noah offers sacrifice to God upon being released from the Ark. If the Noahic covenant was truly common would we see a blood sacrifice associated with it?

Second, the Noahic is Redemptive if only because it ends in a “new creation — restoration.” The Noahic covenant is a proleptic and typological event that portrays the final and ultimate redemption to be found in Christ. The Noahic covenant is thus, contrary to DVD’s assertion, Redemptive.

The fact that the Noahic covenant is Redemptive is pointed to in I Peter in such explicit terms it is difficult to believe that anybody could hold the Noahic covenant as common. The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.

I Peter 1:20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Eight were saved (Redeemed). The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.

Now, no one would argue that the Noahic covenant didn’t have implications for what R2K calls the “common realm,” but clearly the Noahic covenant is a Redemptive covenant. Noah points us back to creation and speaks of its renewal, but points us forward to the ultimate renewal in Christ. It is thoroughly redemptive, not merely “common.”

If the Noahic covenant made promises of Redemption, contrary to DVD, then his whole R2K project fails. Let it fail.

9.) It is interesting to note, per DVD’s standards, that the first political community to form after the flood wherein God’s people sought to live in peace with all men, and wherein the commonalities that are to be expected between all men, regardless of their faith, in their respective political communities is recorded in Genesis 11 and is known as Babel. I’m confident a ancestor of DVD was alive then and was emphasizing the importance of common grace.

10.) This is a comparative tidbit in terms of exposing DVD but possibly still a significant one. Note how DVD repeatedly uses the term “human beings.” Once upon a time the word there would be “mankind.” Is DVD influenced by political correctness?