Martin & McAtee On The Death Of The West

“Beginning and ending with man, there is pessimism. Why? Because man is fallen. He is in rebellion against God, refusing to bow to God and purporting to even be God. Thus, beginning and ending with man, there can only be a compounding of evil, and matters can only wax ever worse…. The bad new, however, gets worse. As a consequence of having abandoned the supernatural and, if only inadvertently, absolutizing this age, what we will witness is death on a whole sale basis as a way of so called, “life.” That is what we have witnessed during the past century. We are so immunized against death that we have come to accept it without comment though millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people have been put to death in the name of applied social science.

That leads us, ultimately, to pessimism and despair. Ah, but the Biblical Christian is highly and eternally optimistic, in the best sense of that term. Why? Because the Biblical Christian has good news.”

Dr. Glenn R. Martin
Professor of History / Political Science
Prevailing Worldviews

Observations

1.) The failures of the 20th -21st centuries are theological failures. The deaths of the million Christian Armenians at the hand of the Muslim Turks, the death of hundreds of millions of Christians by the Communist Russians, the deaths of millions of Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies by the National Socialist Germans, the deaths of hundreds of millions of Chinese under Communist Mao, the almost complete destruction of the Khmer people by the Communist in Cambodia, the untold slaughter of Cubans by Castro Communism, and the tens of millions of deaths at the hands of American Humanists in abortuaries throughout this country have all been torture, murder and death pursued because of faulty theology.

Bad theology kills people.

2.) Sound theology requires our first and last consideration to be the God of the Bible. Should we ever start with man as our first consideration then man becomes our ultimate principle and eventually man, over the course of time, will become absolutized, and so will begin to put other men to death in the name of applied social science and with the best of intentions. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.

3.) Scripture says, speaking of Wisdom (and the Lord Christ is Wisdom incarnate), “All those who hate me love death.” As Dr. Martin notes, the West has embraced death as seen in,

a.) Our dwindling birthrates — to the point we no longer are at replacement levels
b.) Our habits of abortion and euthanasia,
c.) Our immigration rates, which are working to replace us as a definitive people

Now as if this were not bad enough, the West is doing this dance with death, and as Martin notes, is calling it the very essence of life.

Isaiah 5:20 — “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

When we strike out at God (and that is what the West has been doing since the French Philosophes) the result is that we kill ourselves.

4.) The “absolutizing of this age” that Martin speaks of is key. What has happened is that this age is being driven by worldview assumptions that are not Biblical. Yet, what the Church has done, by absolutizing this age, is that it has reintepreted Biblical Christianity through the grid of this present age with the result that the tenets of Cultural Marxism (the Theology informing this age) are now identified as the tenets of Biblical Christianity. That is how “absolutizing this age” happens. The result of this is that now Christian ministers, usually quite unaware of what they are doing, are committed to “helping” their people fit into this present absolutized age when what they should be doing is aiding their people in seeing that this present absolutized age stands in defiance to and rebellion against the God of the Bible and His Biblical Christianity.

5.) Martin’s beef against “applied social science,” refers to how the West has been conquered by various strands of the humanist Social Sciences like “neo-orthodox theology,” “Boasian Cultural Anthropology,” “Marxist Economics,” “Freudian – Rogerian – Skinnerian, etc. Psychology,” “Spencerian – Durkheimian – Webberian, etc.” Sociology, the “Legal Positivism” of men like Christopher Columbus Langdell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the “Educational Theory” of men like Dewey, Rugg, and others, The theories of Kinsey on human sexuality, and The Logical Positivism of the Vienna circle passing as Philosophy. More of the applied social sciences could be listed but you get the gist.

Martin’s problem with the applied social sciences, as exampled above, was that they all were products of differing humanist theologies that were at war with Biblical Christian theology. Martin understood that the humanist applied social sciences were killing us as a people precisely because the applied social sciences, though passing themselves as being the very definition of enlightenment, were in fact, but the dust of death. Martin understood and taught that these social sciences desperately needed reinterpreted through a Biblical grid and his reward for his brilliance was often the back of the hand from his colleagues.

6.) We should on the optimistic note that Martin ended on. The Biblical Christian can remain optimistic because he knows that God is Sovereign and he has good news for those who desire to be delivered from the humanist applied social science house of death. The Biblical Christian, armed with God’s truth, can stand against the humanist social sciences that are killing us, as a people, and can say “this is the way of the abundant life, walk ye in it.” The Biblical Christian, armed with God’s truth, can say to those weary of the culture of death as built by the practitioners of the applied social sciences, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

J. Gresham Machen On The Need For Christian Artists, Christian Musicians, Christian Novelists, etc.

“For Christians to influence the world with the truth of God’s Word requires the recovery of the great Reformation doctrine of vocation. Christians are called to God’s service not only in church professions but also in every secular calling. The task of restoring truth to the culture depends largely on our laypeople. To bring back truth, on a practical level, the church must encourage Christians to be not merely consumers of culture but makers of culture. The church needs to cultivate Christian artists, musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, teachers, scientists, business executives, and the like, teaching its laypeople the sense in which every secular vocation-including, above all, the callings of husband, wife, and parent–is a sphere of Christian ministry, a way of serving God and neighbor that is grounded in God’s truth. Christian laypeople must be encouraged to be leaders in their fields, rather than eager-to-please followers, working from the assumptions of their biblical worldview, not the vapid clichés of pop culture.”

― J. Gresham Machen
Christianity & Liberalism

Further Observations On RJR & Libertarianism

I don’t have a problem with RJR quoting the Libertarians or even with him making common cause with them as co-belligerents on certain issues. I acknowledge that RJR often was in bed with the Libertarians. I will even say that I can see RJR supporting a Ron Paul candidacy for President. (Does anyone know if RJR said anything regarding the Paul Libertarian Presidential Candidacy in 1988?)

However, what I object to, as coming from American Vision, is that they want to thump that Libertarian side of RJR completely and then turn around and disavow all the Kinist quotes from RJR as if that side of RJR never existed. The Kinist side of RJR is the balance and tension that is needed for all his Libertarian statements. It is true that RJR was a Libertarian as that concept finds meaning in the context of God’s Law word, but it is equally true that RJR was a Kinist as that concept finds meaning in the context of God’s law word. The fact that RJR would have embraced both Libertarian strains and Kinist strains fits perfectly with his understanding of, “The One and The Many,” and the fact that organizations invoking the name of RJR finds problems with either of these necessary strains is telling. Is it possible to be loyal to RJR and recognize his Libertarian strains while denouncing those who also recognize his Kinist strains or would such lopsidedness communicate that such a organization is leaning to far in a non God’s law word conditioned Libertarianism?

But AV doesn’t want the kinist RJR. They only want the Libertarian RJR. Meanwhile the Daniel Richies, Stephen Hallbrooks, and John Loftons don’t want either the Libertarian nor the Kinist RJR. The Theonomy of those people is highly suspect.

Rush was no Libertarian in the Rothbard or Rand sense of the word but He was smart enough to use them to advance His agenda, which had a libertarian side as that Libertarianism was conditioned by a Christian Theonomic Reconstructionist worldview.

I think what we might be seeing now is the unraveling of the coalition that RJR built. RJR was able to bring together a coalitiion of Libertarians, Kinists, soft covenanters, agrarians, and southern sympathizers but it seems that coalition is becoming undone.

Ode To Hot Water

When Hunger brays, at end of day there is always ample fodder
But oh to play, in the massaging spray, of glorious Hot Water
The aches and pains accumulate from working hour after hour
But they become negated, as I’m saturated in a simmering hot shower

Oh sing the praises of heated drops
That insures that I don’t falter
And removes assorted weary stops
All hail to heated water

When cold nips, or freezing wind rips, a fireplace is the cure
But repeated sips, of heated drips, of water clean and pure
Can warm me from the inside out as fine tea melts beneath hot water
And is served to me, to relieve my chill, by compassionate wife or daughter

Oh lift your voice and give thanks
For the invention of heated coiling
And lift your glass to vast storage tanks
That can deliver our water boiling

When its time to clean, in places unseen, it is a thankless task
But cleanliness next to Godliness is a virtue for which to ask
So, thanking God, we turn again to the civilizing hot tap
And hot water aids in our cleaning parade, filling heaven’s gap

Oh tip your hat, and raise a glass
to God’s invention of the Hot Spring
Inspiring men to bring hot water en mass
To homes that men might sing

Hot water, Hot water, Hot water, may we never miss your blessing
You bathe our children, and clean our clothes so that in finery we’re dressing
Hot water, Hot water, Hot water, may we never forget the time
When men spent their days, in stinky ways, forever covered in grime

Martin & McAtee On Worldview Thinking On The Eclectic Level

Some quotes from IWU legendary Dr. Glenn Martin,

“Most College and University faculty members operate at a third level (of worldview thinking). The eclectic level of application. They make eclectic selection from the packages which have already been marketed, which they then present to their students.”

Implications

1.) The fact that the selection is being made in an eclectic fashion indicates that these faculty members are seldom, if ever, epistemologically self conscious. They are operating with borrowed capital from another person’s worldview and having acquired it much the same way a person might acquire a suit, or a pair of shoes, (they purchased it from somebody else) they have little understanding of what went into putting the worldview together. John Maynard Keynes captures something of what I am aiming at here when he said,

“Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

2.) If the students, to whom the faculty present their second-hand worldviews, do embrace the worldview the faculty is teaching, just as the faculty member received it from his professor, they are now likewise eclectic worldview thinkers to the third generation. The worldview, like the aforementioned suit, is a hand-me-down to another generation. All the faults and contradictions that were originally present in the Worldview as it was originally marketed remain unobserved.

It is important to realize in this conversation that at the end of the day the world of worldview possibilities can be reduced to two should all worldviews be boiled down to their essentials and examined on a presuppositional basis.