Category: Uncategorized

But here is a point I would want to emphasize, does the advent of Christianity — does the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ — does it fundamentally change what civil government is supposed to do in this world? And I would say “no.” And I think Kuyper would say “no” as well. And Romans 13 looks very similar to the Noahic covenant for example. That governments have always and continued to be responsible for doing justice, for punishing the wrong doer and praising the good. Now of course this needs lots of working out. But I would say that basic functioning of civil government is not fundamentally changed by Christianity. And that is why I say it shouldn’t be “redeemed.” Christians … ought to be better at promoting justice within civil government but civil government remains a creation / common grace ordinance from God… it doesn’t mean we are fundamentally changing the nature of the institutions themselves or that the institutions remain something other than penultimate or provisional.

Dr. David Van Drunnen
Conversation / Interview with Dr. Robert Godfrey

(1. & 2.) DVD is correct here that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ does not fundamentally changed what civil government is supposed to do in this world. Where DVD is incorrect is assuming that unbelievers who serve in civil government give two shakes about what civil government is supposed to do in this world. Has the man never read Machiavelli so as to know what the typical pagan magistrate understands his role as magistrate to be? DVD is just a tad younger than me. Where has he been for the 20th-21st century when considering pagan magistrates? So while the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ does not fundamentally change what civil government is supposed to do those realities fundamentally change magistrates who bow the knee to Christ so that they care about doing what they are supposed to do as magistrates.

(3.) DVD keeps banging that Noahic covenant drum. It is the lynch pin for his whole R2K program. If his interpretation of the Noahic covenant fails his whole innovative “theology” goes in the muck pile. I have dealt with DVD’s Biblical-theological error before. That analysis can be accessed here.

https://ironink.org/?p=8213&

(4.) Again, DVD is correct in describing that which governments are responsible. However, when is the last time DVD knows when Christ-hating magistrates actually brought forth justice as defined by God’s character as found in God’s Law? I can offer up 10,000’s of words giving instances where the government, instead of punishing the wrong doer and praising the good, punished the good and praised the wrong-doer. I suppose it is too much to hope that DVD has ever heard of anarcho-tyranny? And why do governments so typically act this way? It is simply because the magistrates who run them are Christ haters and care nothing for justice, or punishing the wrong doer, or praising the good. So, the problem with DVD’s construct is that the man seems to honestly believe that in his make-believe world the Christian magistrate and the non-Christian magistrate will act in the same fashion.

(6.) DVD seems to have a problem with “is” and “ought.” While we can agree that it ought to be the case that the basic functioning of civil government would not be fundamentally changed by Christianity we seem to be stuck over what actually is the case. The wicked magistrate ought to follow God’s law in adjudicating, but precisely because the wicked magistrate is wicked he does not nor even cares to follow God’s law in adjudicating. Only redemption can change the man so that he cares once again to rule as a Christian. Only when the pagan magistrate is converted he can then bring the “ought” and “is” together. However, this is not acceptable for DVD because he has it stuck in his head that the Christ-hating magistrate can rule in the same manner of the Christ-loving magistrate.

The irony here is the DVD is appealing to a time when unbelieving magistrates may well have come closer to ruling in a Christian manner precisely because that was the cultural ethos that was informing them. Because the implications of their Christ-hating was muted by living and ruling in CHRISTENDOM unbelieving magistrates were not as consistent in their Christ-hating as they might otherwise have been. Yet, DVD, both horrifyingly and amusingly enough, seems to think that the way to have Christ-hating magistrates who rule like Christ-loving magistrates is to tear down the notion of Christendom. This R2K thinking tends to make a sane man edge towards complete exasperation.

(7.) Of course “It” can’t be redeemed. However, men can be redeemed and when men are redeemed that Institutions wherein they handle the levers changes along with them. This isn’t rocket science.

(8.) DVD seems to think that these institutions are comprised as inanimate objects. Civil Governments are run by flesh and blood men, so while the institution as institution might not be redeemed the men and women who run the institutions and make them what they are certainly can be redeemed and when they are redeemed the institution is redeemed since the institution is nothing but the outward manifestation of a people’s inward beliefs. It is true that the civil government does not handle the keys, and is not involved in Word and Sacrament and so in that sense it is a common grace Institution. However, where does scripture teach that common grace institutions can’t be Christian in their orientation, nature, and direction?

(9.) The Church is ultimate when as it pertains to the Keys and Word and Sacrament. The civil-social government is ultimate as it pertains to the sword and dispensing justice. The family is ultimate as it pertains to the rod and the catechizing and educating of the children. Each are ultimate is their own sphere but each and all are only penultimate as operating under the ultimate of God and His Kingdom.

But that is the problems isn’t it DVD? You with your R2K theology do not believe that the Kingdom can be found anywhere except in your ultimate institution of the Church. You identify the Church and the Kingdom as exactly synonymous and therefore everything else is only penultimate and can’t be brought over into the Kingdom of God and the new Jerusalem.

And while we are at it, we better say again for the person who is being exposed to your (R2K) problems for the first time. You have the theology you have because you hold the conviction that Christ won’t have victory in this world in time and space. Your R2K theology is all based upon that premise. You believe Christ can’t have victory in the political realm, the legal realm, the educational realm, the Arts realm, the family realm, the political realm, and so you have developed a theology where it is literally impossible for Christ to have victory in those jurisdictions.

I can only say to you what Luther said to Zwingli at Marburg.

“Your spirit and our spirit cannot go together. Indeed, it is quite obvious that we do not have the same spirit.”

“The family is grounded in God’s created work. It is re-affirmed in God’s common grace in the Noahic covenant. Marriage and family is just as legitimate in those terms for the unbeliever as it is for the believer. My own unbelieving neighbor is no more or no less married than I am because I am a believer. And I think the basic responsibilities of the family are also common in the sense of the mutual support of husband and wife. The procreating and the raising of children to be the next generation of those populating the earth. Those are common responsibilities that believers have with unbelievers. Of course we expect believers to understand those better but its not a unique responsibilities for believers.”

Dr. David Van Drunnen
Interview / Conversation with Dr. Robert Godfrey

1.) All because something is grounded in God’s creational work does not mean that it cannot be or is not taken up into His redemptive work. The Sabbath is an example. The Sabbath was established at Creation but clearly the Sabbath becomes a central part of God’s redemptive program. In the same way we see that while the family may indeed have been originally grounded in God’s creational work, like the Sabbath, the family now has a Redemptive impact. If this wasn’t true then how could St. Paul characterize Christian children as “Holy?” (I Cor. 7:14).

2.) Notice a move above that R2K is constantly guilty of. On one hand they insist that believers and unbelievers have in common many things (in the case above “Marriage and family”) but on the other hand they define the thing they have in common in a Christian fashion that is not necessarily owned as a definition by the non-Christian whom they have marriage and family in common. The believer and the unbeliever may indeed have marriage in common (maybe) but they certainly don’t necessarily have the marriage in common that Dr. Van Drunnen describes above. The unbeliever who is in a sodomite or lesbian marriage does not have marriage in common with the believer. The unbeliever who is in a polygamist or polyandry marriage does not have marriage in common with the unbeliever. The unbeliever who is a serial adulterer does not have marriage in common with the unbeliever. The man who routinely beats his wife and children is not in a marriage where there is mutual support of the man and his wife as Van Drunnen defines marriage as existing in the common kingdom.

The R2K fanboys are constantly doing this. They talk about what the believer and the unbeliever have in common and then they define that area which is common based upon Christian convictions. This habit really does end up destroying their whole argumentation because if the area in common between the believer and unbeliever really isn’t existing as common then can we really say that the believer and the unbeliever have these common areas in common?

What Dr. VanDrunnen (DVD) and the other R2K fanboys have done, in terms of their common kingdom concept, is that they have taken the common kingdom categories and they have defined them with Biblical parameters. Yes, the believer and unbeliever have monogamous marriage in common — a marriage that fits the description as given by DVD above but only because the unbeliever is acting inconsistently with his own worldview. If the believer and the unbeliever have things in common it is only because of the fortuitous inconsistency of the unbeliever to live consistently with his presuppositions. It is not because the unbeliever and believer have these naturally in common. Let Dr. Van Drunnen go back to the Utopian project that was New Harmony Indiana in the 19th century where the men had all women in common and the let him tell me that the believer and unbeliever have marriage in common.

3.) It is true that marriage is not a unique responsibility for the believer, but it is also true the Christian marriage is a unique responsibility for the believer. As stated in #2 DVD and the R2K fanboys presuppose a Christian worldview and then argue that the unbeliever has in common everything except the Church and so is responsible to carry those common things out in a mutual manner with the non-Christian as if God’s sanctificational reality makes no difference between believer and unbeliever.

All this of this because DVD says that he is trying to avoid the polarization that comes with a non R2K approach to Christian theology. One is forced to ask, “Whatever happened to the Christian doctrine of the antithesis?” When I hear DVD moan about polarization what I hear is that the Christian is supposed to be just like the non-Christian in his marriage, in his politics, in his education, etc. We are living in a time where more polarization needs to exist as between Christian and non-Christian as the non-Christian lives increasingly consistent with his Christ hating presuppositions.

R2K as a “theology” is Roundup as sprayed on the visible Church. I have no doubt the R2K fanboys have the best of intentions. I also have no doubt that those good intentions pave the road to hell. They need to either repent or be cast out of the Reformed Church.

“I am talking about the Communism of Leon Trotsky that is based upon hatred for Christianity. Remember that Communism and Christianity can never live in the same atmosphere. Communism is older than Christianity. It is the curse of the ages. It hounded and persecuted the Savior during His earthly ministry, inspired His crucifixion, derided His dying agony, and then gambled for His garments at the foot of the cross; and has spent more than 1900 years trying to destroy Christianity and everything based on Christian principles. The alien minded communistic enemies of Christianity and their stooges are trying to get control of the press of this country… They are trying to take over the radio. Listen to their lying broadcasts in broken English and you can almost smell them. They are now trying to take over the Motion Picture industry, and howl to high heaven when our Committee on un-American Activities propose to investigate them. They want to spread their un-American propaganda, as well as their loathsome, lying, immoral, anti-Christian filth before the eyes of your children in every community in America.”

John Rankin (D) — Mississippi US Congressman
Chairman — House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
Speech on the floor of the US Congress — 1945

Was Rankin correct?

1.) Communism does indeed hate Christianity.

Communism embraces a Atheistic-Materialistic Worldview wherein the State is God and in the State man lives and moves and has his being.

2.) Communism and Christianity indeed can’t live in the same atmosphere.

Wherever either of these exist in their purer forms they will always push out the other. Christianity, when it is faithful will destroy Communism and Communism where it is faithful will destroy Christianity. Neither will allow the presence of the other for where the other is allowed to exist it threatens the very existence of the other.

3.) Communism was largely and disproportionately populated by the descendants of that Edomite / Khazar tribe who persecuted Christ.

This is not disputable though it is typically a PC sin to notice this fact.

4.) Communists did get control and retain control of our press.

From yester-years Edward R. Murrow, to Walter Cronkite to today’s Rachel Maddow and Don Lemon our Lugenpresse is controlled either by closet Communists or fellow travelers. The Worldview of the Lugenpresse is Atheistic-Materialism.

5.) Communists did take over motion pictures and have retained control.

“Of all the Arts, for us the cinema is the most important.”

Vladimir Lenin

The Hollywood 10 really existed and were merely the tip of the iceberg of the Communist problem in Hollywood. When you view a Hollywood film you should just assume that you will be being served up some kind of Marxist egalitarian atheistic materialistic pablum.

The following linked video provides explicit connections between Communism and Hollywood. Do not view this video if four letter words trouble you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOtinTlx7yo&fbclid=IwAR0OL0lHfh8BJyLKjLjO5TKH0VP9pABfMfKJrjtGHbxEmxR89xEzKcwJtBQ

6.) Communists have corrupted our children.

The Government schools as Institutions catechize our children in to the atheistic-Materialistic worldview.

“As we should finally admit, from Berkeley to Yale to Mizzou, it is on our campuses where generations of cadres have received their Marxian indoctrination under permanent cover of ‘bright college years,’ football games, and cap and gown. Over the past century, these cadres became the indispensable legions of ideological victory in a ‘Cold War’ most Americans still insist they won.”

Diana West
The Red Thread

I have seen this as a Pastor and I have seen this in my extended family. I have seen 18 year olds head off to Colleges… even ones who advertise themselves as Conservative ones and what happens in the course of 2-4 years is that these young adults are transmogrified into the replacement leftist and proletariat class whose role is to march through the existing Institutions in order to revolutionize what little remains of our Christian social order.

As a parent or Cousin, or Brother or I would warn that sending young adults to University may not be wise, but, I, as a troglodyte knuckle dragging Christian minister what could I possibly know ? So, with excitement little Johnny and Suzy would be shipped off to school just to return in very little time with colored hair, nose rings, and in violent opposition to Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and Western Civilization in general. I’ve seen young people who I had catechized develop a “I know that Christianity is a myth” mindset which they learned from their Professors at their Conservative or Christian University.

I also saw it with my own eyes up close. When my oldest finished high school we allowed her to attend a local community college while serving as a Nanny – Au pair of a solid local Christian family. Not long after her starting I’m getting grilled inquiring how Christian the Puritans really were. Question were being raised about how just the social-order was that the Puritans built.

Finally, I decided that I had to attend the class wherein all this was coming from. I showed up to discover a Professor who could not have been more than 30. It wasn’t long before he was teeing off on the Puritans. I sat their clenching my jaw and curling my toes at his continued misrepresentations of the Puritan society. Finally, at the end of the class hour it was my turn. I didn’t have time to unravel everything he had said but I gave him a list of about 10 books he needed to read. I told him that he had grossly misrepresented the Puritans and I gave him chapter and verse on how that was so. I told him that the Puritans had very little to do with whatever it was he was teaching. I remember distinctly speaking to him about how he had completely gotten wrong how the Puritans understood Christianity. I also asked him if he realized that “the Puritans” constituted many streams that emptied into the same river so that it wasn’t always advantageous to speak about the “Puritans” without getting more specific. I didn’t let him get a word in edgewise for 10 minutes and then class was past over and the students were itching to get away.

A few weeks later he stopped my daughter and told her that he had looked up some of the sources I had given him and further told her I was right when it came to my sources.

Now the above could read like a “I told him” account but what I want it to be an account of is that the University is no place for God’s and our covenant seed. Certainly there may be exceptions where University might work, but on the whole the University (especially the Christian University) is not a place where parents want to place their children who are hungry for truth. 18 – 22 y/o are not equipped to go mano vs. mano with a well studied Collegiate liberal professor (tautology) when it comes to the field that the pagan Professor has “mastered.”

In another instance I had a young person who had been one of my best catechism students tell me that they had a major paper assigned requiring the students to explain what central question that had to be answered in order to pursue truth. This student wrote a paper that advocated an answer that he had learned from me over the years in Catechism. The answer to that question is and remains that the central question that has to be answered in order to pursue truth was the question of God’s existence. This Professor at this Conservative college told him that was not the right answer and graded his paper poorly for offering that answer. My young protege was crest fallen and was wrongly disappointed in me when they should have been disappointed with addlepated professor. The left had succeeded in picking off another young Christian altering the trajectory of their Christianity so that their Christianity ended up soft and squishy as they in turn became an academic.

Years ago, I went toe to toe with a Christian Minister Professor who now teaches at my Alma Mater. I do not believe, given the man’s views, that he was even Christian. We had a long and involved conversation that made me determined that I would do everything I could do to make sure no parent I knew would EVER send their children to sit under the tutelage of the heretic whom had come across my conversational path. Most Academic Ph. D’s I know (and I know a few) who are teaching young adults scare me to death. If I had a magic wand I’d make sure they never got near young skulls full of mush.

I could give other examples even more extreme.

Allow me one further observation on the consequences of what we are speaking of here. It is not only the students who have their faith shipwrecked. My observation has been that a result of this phenomenon I have recorded here it is often the case that not only is the student lost but so are their parents. I have seen repeatedly that a child, while at University, who is ideologically and theologically unraveled in terms of their Christianity end up pulling their parents to the left along with them. Parents so love their children that they end up being radicalized in a Marxist direction along with their child so that they don’t lose their relationship with their child. What I have seen is that parents will give up long held convictions, which were a consequence of their Christian faith in order that they won’t forever have to live in tension with their precious Johnny or Suzy. They would rather alienate Jesus then alienate their children.

Heidelberg Catechism

Q. 76) What does it mean to eat the crucified body of Christ and to drink his shed blood?

A. First, to accept with a believing heart all the suffering and the death of Christ, and so receive forgiveness of sins and life eternal.1

Second, to be united more and more to his sacred body through the Holy Spirit, who lives both in Christ and in us.2 Therefore, although Christ is in heaven3 and we are on earth, yet we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones,4 and we forever live and are governed by one Spirit, as the members of our body are by one soul.5

1 Jn 6:35, 40, 50-54.
2 Jn 6:55, 56; 1 Cor 12:13.
3 Acts 1:9-11; 3:21; 1 Cor 11:26; Col 3:1.
4 1 Cor 6:15, 17; Eph 5:29, 30; 1 Jn 4:13.
5 Jn 6:56-58; 15:1-6; Eph 4:15, 16; 1 Jn 3:24.

Here we come at the invitation and command of the Lord Christ to His table. And we might find ourselves asking “what means this,” and that even if we have been around these things all our lives. Just as a fish is the last one you’d want to ask about what water means so because Christians have been so long around the Lord’s table sometimes they are the last ones to know what it all means.

As such we take a few minutes to remind ourselves of the meaning of eating the crucified body of Christ and the meaning of drinking the shed blood of Christ.

For our purpose this morning note the language they use here in the question. Following Christ’s institution of the meal the catechizers speak directly about the Sacrament. They do not tell us that we are eating or drinking a symbol. They tell us that we are eating the crucified body of Christ and drinking His shed blood. They used this language even though they knew it had been misused and misinterpreted from the Church from which they were departing. They understood that even though there was not a literal consuming of the body and blood of Christ, still the union between the Church as body and Christ as the head was so intimate that they retained the idea of eating the broken body of Christ and drinking the shed blood of Christ. They offered a spiritual eating and a spiritual drinking and yet still a very real eating and drinking.

As they turn to the explicit answer of what this means they immediately point to the death of Christ by saying

First, to accept with a believing heart all the suffering and the death of Christ, and so receive forgiveness of sins and life eternal.1

They thus establish that in the Eucharist we find the atonement and our own escape from death. The table is thus proclaiming the death of Christ and that our sins are no more remembered by God. When we partake of the Table we set aside the sting of death and embrace life eternal.

Part of the implication of this is that we, as those who partake of Christ’s table, are not preoccupied with death. This sets us apart.

Let’s take our own social order as an example. We are seeing daily a preoccupation with avoiding death. Our social order is so fearful of the idea of death that, ironically enough, we are killing ourselves in the name of avoiding death. We are hearing, at every turn, are we not, that the most extreme measures are justified if we can only save one life. If we can save one life it is worth spiraling into a Great Depression. If we can save one life it is worth buying drones from China so as to make sure Battle Creek citizens are social distancing. If we can save one life we will shut down a whole state when the problem is restricted to three counties. If we can just save one life. And this as coming predominantly from those who have no problem visiting death upon the judicially innocent unborn.

The Christian, precisely because he comes to the Table and sits under the Word should not be characterized by this kind of abject and senseless fear. And why is that? Because the meaning of eating the body of Christ and drinking His shed blood is in part that Christ has died our death. We are the atoned for people. Christ has died in our place. In the table we eat of the bread of eternal life and we drink the cup of forgiveness. Death, at least should not, have the terrorizing effect on God’s people so that we pursue near certain death in wanton destruction of economic infrastructures in order to escape the panic and stampede of the remotely possible death.

Coming to the Lord’s Table gives us a preternatural calm. We have no desire to die before the Lord’s timing but neither do we find ourselves panicked out of our minds that we might die.

And so in proclaiming the Death of Christ as we come to the table and eat and drink in faith we once again are reminded of the Atonement that the Lord Christ provides. He takes from us our sins and accounts our sins to Him and God counts Christ’s righteousness … Christ’s acceptability … Christ’s favor … Christ’s perfection, to our account. We find our safety from our certain coming death in all that Christ has done for us.

This accepting of Christ’s death and atonement that is proclaimed in the Table really does mark the epistemologically self-conscious Christian as different.

As we live in a community of faith basic to any healthy community is embracing Christ’s atonement.

All communities outside of Christ, whatever foundation they may seek to have or profess, are founded on sin and so as instrumental to their fallen community they seek to establish some mechanism of atonement within their fallen social order for you see no social order established on sin can experience anything other than death. Such social orders are without effectual atonement, without gracious grace, and without a valid hope.

And so, as Atonement is an inescapable category (by this we mean that while the need of atonement may be verbally denied, all anti-Christ social orders [communities] will implement some form of godless atonement in order to deal with whatever idea of sin that social order creates and acknowledges) all social orders when examined will have a means of atonement — a means of covering sin. If men in a social order will not have Christ’s death and atonement they will ferret out false blood atonements.

And what is the means of Atonement right now in our social order? What will cover our sins of the fear of death? What atonement will deliver us from the power of fear of death? Why clearly one answer is vaccines. Vaccines are one of our blood atonements. They will cover our sin. They will set us free from our mindless fear of death. Or so we tell ourselves that.

So we eat the flesh of the unborn in vaccinating up. Our false atonement is mercury laden and has who knows what strange DNA and other pollutants and we inject all this in order to deliver us from death. We won’t have Christ’s blood atonement and His death in our place and so we create false blood atonements and we metaphorically eat their flesh and drink their blood.

You see, my friends, blood atonement has not gone away in our social order. It has merely been transferred. Atonement, imputation, substitution… all key realities of the Christian faith our inescapable realities that can not be escaped.

So, as we come to this table to eat His crucified body and drink His blood we do so understanding that in part the meaning is that Christ has died our death, has covered and forgiven our sins, and has, even now given to us a eternal life that finds us going from eternal life unto eternal life until this life though swallowed in death will yield the fullness of eternal life. We will have this Atonement… this forgiveness … this eternal life and no other.